Related papers: Toxicity in State Sponsored Information Operations
Polarization, declining trust, and wavering support for democratic norms are pressing threats to U.S. democracy. Exposure to verified and quality news may lower individual susceptibility to these threats and make citizens more resilient to…
The convenience of social media has also enabled its misuse, potentially resulting in toxic behavior. Nearly 66% of internet users have observed online harassment, and 41% claim personal experience, with 18% facing severe forms of online…
Until recently, social media were seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication ecosystem has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an…
Coordinated campaigns on social media play a critical role in shaping crisis information environments, particularly during the onset of conflicts when uncertainty is high and verified information is scarce. We study the interplay between…
Toxic Online Content (TOC) includes messages on digital platforms that are harmful, hostile, or damaging to constructive public discourse. Individuals, organizations, and LLMs respond to TOC through counterspeech or counternarrative…
Social media, once hailed as a vehicle for democratization and the promotion of positive social change across the globe, are under attack for becoming a tool of political manipulation and spread of disinformation. A case in point is the…
This work advances investigations into the visual media shared by agents in disinformation campaigns by characterizing the images shared by accounts identified by Twitter as being part of such campaigns. Using images shared by US…
Twitter is one of the most popular online micro-blogging and social networking platforms. This platform allows individuals to freely express opinions and interact with others regardless of geographic barriers. However, with the good that…
Social media platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for connectivity and exchange of ideas; however, they also serve as fertile grounds for the dissemination of disinformation. Over the years, there has been a rise in state-sponsored…
The evolution of digital communication systems and the designs of online platforms have inadvertently facilitated the subconscious propagation of toxic behavior. Giving rise to reactive responses to toxic behavior. Toxicity in online…
Understanding the dynamics of language toxicity on social media is important for us to investigate the propagation of misinformation and the development of echo chambers for political scenarios such as U.S. presidential elections. Recent…
Foreign information operations conducted by Russian and Chinese actors exploit the United States' permissive information environment. These campaigns threaten democratic institutions and the broader Westphalian model. Yet, existing…
State and geopolitical censorship on Twitter, now X, has been turning into a routine, raising concerns about the boundaries between criminal content and freedom of speech. One such censorship practice, withholding content in a particular…
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was accompanied by practices of information warfare, yet existing evidence is largely anecdotal while large-scale empirical evidence is lacking. Here, we analyze the spread of pro-Russian…
Social media platforms promise to enable rich and vibrant conversations online; however, their potential is often hindered by antisocial behaviors. In this paper, we study the relationship between structure and toxicity in conversations on…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommender systems play a crucial role in determining the content that users are exposed to on social media platforms. However, the behavioural patterns of these systems are often opaque, complicating…
Toxicity is endemic to online social networks including Twitter. It follows a Pareto like distribution where most of the toxicity is generated by a very small number of profiles and as such, analyzing and characterizing these toxic profiles…
The widespread use of offensive content in social media has led to an abundance of research in detecting language such as hate speech, cyberbullying, and cyber-aggression. Recent work presented the OLID dataset, which follows a taxonomy for…
It is a widely accepted fact that state-sponsored Twitter accounts operated during the 2016 US presidential election, spreading millions of tweets with misinformation and inflammatory political content. Whether these social media campaigns…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…