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Participation on social media platforms has many benefits but also poses substantial threats. Users often face an unintended loss of privacy, are bombarded with mis-/disinformation, or are trapped in filter bubbles due to over-personalized…
Different advertising messages work for different people. Machine learning can be an effective way to personalise climate communications. In this paper we use machine learning to reanalyse findings from a recent study, showing that online…
The full-scale conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine generated an unprecedented amount of news articles and social media data reflecting opposing ideologies and narratives. These polarized campaigns have led to mutual…
In the last decades, global awareness towards the importance of diverse representation has been increasing. Lack of diversity and discrimination toward minorities did not skip the film industry. Here, we examine ethnic bias in the film…
The role of social media in promoting media pluralism was initially viewed as wholly positive. However, some governments are allegedly manipulating social media by hiring online commentators (also known as trolls) to spread propaganda and…
Manipulative and misleading news have become a commodity for some online news outlets and these news have gained a significant impact on the global mindset of people. Propaganda is a frequently employed manipulation method having as goal to…
Monitoring advertising around controversial issues is an important step in ensuring accountability and transparency of political processes. To that end, we use the Facebook Ads Library to collect 2312 migration-related advertising campaigns…
As social media has permeated large parts of the population it simultaneously has become a way to reach many people e.g. with political messages. One way to efficiently reach those people is the application of automated computer programs…
We developed and used a collection of statistical methods (unsupervised machine learning) to extract relevant information from a Twitter supplied data set consisting of alleged Russian trolls who (allegedly) attempted to influence the 2016…
Cybercrimes such as online scams and fraud have become prevalent. Cybercriminals often abuse various global or regional events as themes of their fraudulent activities to breach user trust and attain a higher attack success rate. These…
This paper presents the research of the influence of cognitive, behavioral, representational factors on the susceptibility of the participants in social networks to misinformation, as well as on the activity of the nodes in this regard. The…
Russian propaganda outlet RT (formerly, Russia Today) produces content in seven languages. There is ample evidence that RT's communication techniques differ for different language audiences. In this article, we offer the first comprehensive…
People's behavior on online social networks, which store geo-tagged information showing where people were or are at the moment, can provide information about their offline life as well. In this paper we present one possible research…
The unprecedented access offered by the World Wide Web brings with it the potential to gather huge amounts of data on human activities. Here we exploit this by using a toy model of financial markets, the Minority Game (MG), to investigate…
Social media platforms enhance the propagation of online misinformation by providing large user bases with a quick means to share content. One way to disrupt the rapid dissemination of misinformation at scale is through warning tags, which…
State-sponsored "bad actors" increasingly weaponize social media platforms to launch cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during elections. Social media companies, due to their rapid growth and scale, struggle to prevent the…
The framing of political issues can influence policy and public opinion. Even though the public plays a key role in creating and spreading frames, little is known about how ordinary people on social media frame political issues. By creating…
Target-group detection is the task of detecting which group(s) a piece of content is ``directed at or about''. Applications include targeted marketing, content recommendation, and group-specific content assessment. Key challenges include:…
The purpose of this research paper is to critically explore the impact of state and state-sponsored actors on the cyber environment and the future of critical infrastructure, the majority of these attacks on the cyber environment have…
Limited transparency in targeted advertising on online content delivery platforms can breed mistrust for both viewers (of the content and ads) and advertisers. This user study (n=864) explores how explanations for targeted ads can bridge…