- University News Archive - 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock /news-archive/tag/billy-spann/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Fri, 13 May 2022 13:20:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Graduating Student Spotlight: Billy Spann /news-archive/2022/05/13/billy-spann-graduation/ Fri, 13 May 2022 13:20:22 +0000 /news/?p=81523 ... Graduating Student Spotlight: Billy Spann]]> Tell us a little bit about yourself. I grew up in the Little Rock area and went to K-12 schools here. My wife, Christy, and I have three boys, Josh, Sammy, and John. I鈥檝e earned several advanced degrees while working full time and raising a family. I鈥檝e been somewhat of a non-traditional student who has been fortunate enough to be able to work through each of my degrees. I鈥檝e also been a lifelong learner, where I have always been a student of my industry and also a student of whatever discipline I have been in at that time. On April 2, 2022, I finally achieved one of the highest goals I set for myself by successfully completing my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science. What do you do for a living? My work experience includes over 20 years in the wireless technology industry where I’ve been part of the research, design, and optimization of wireless networks. I鈥檝e been lucky enough to be involved in new technology research and planning as the industry has evolved from 3G to 4G and now 5G. I began my career at Alltel Communications, which became Verizon Wireless, and am now employed at Windstream. At Windstream, my team is complementing our next generation fiber-to-the-home buildout strategy by building high performing wireless networks to reach unserved and underserved people in rural areas that don鈥檛 have access to high-speed internet. Your educational background is impressive. Please tell us about that. I have a degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. I also have two master’s degrees from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. One is in business administration (M.B.A), and the other is in computer and information science. I recently defended my doctoral dissertation and will graduate with my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science on May 14. Why did you decide to pursue a Ph.D. at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock? As I mentioned earlier, I have always enjoyed learning and part of my career path has involved the research and deployment of new technologies. I got my MBA when my career was a little more business focused and involved strategic planning and looking at merger and acquisition opportunities. As my career progressed with Verizon, I transitioned back into a more technical role and we started looking at how we could use big data solutions with AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to perform tasks done by humans, such as network monitoring and decision making. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock was local and the Computer Science department has produced some really great programs and research such as the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS). After doing some research, I knew 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock鈥檚 program competed with other top universities, so I knew it would be a good fit for my Ph.D. Who were some of your mentors? Dr. Nitin Agarwal is my advisor and provided major guidance for my research. He leads the COSMOS research center, which stands for Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies. I am one of the 鈥淐osmographers” in this program. Dr. Agarwal leads our group as we develop big data analytical tools to understand online behavior such as information operations, how radical and extremist groups coordinate online, propaganda dissemination, misinformation, fake news, influence operations and other interesting projects. Our research sheds light on these types of digital and cyber behaviors. My dad also influenced me by always pushing me to do my best. Tell us about your dissertation? My research looks at how people use social media to organize and coordinate online collective action for events like protests, demonstrations or social movements. Protests, social justice movements, and other types of information operations (e.g., misinformation, disinformation campaigns) have become pretty popular the last several years due to the ease of using social media to instantly capture and broadcast perceived injustices, or to engage in political discourse. My dissertation provides a computational framework to measure the psychological and social processes that serve as catalysts for these types of events. The techniques from my work provides a new computational approach to measuring these psycho-social behaviors, and ultimately identifies features for predictive modeling of when a protest or demonstration is emerging. Understanding the root behaviors of protest participants will help policymakers develop appropriate interventions or countermeasures if needed. With all of the online deviant behavior, platform manipulation, and influence operations going on discreetly (or sometimes not so discreetly) it鈥檚 a really interesting interdisciplinary research area that bridges the social sciences with computer science, into a field known as computational social science. I鈥檓 excited to see how our computer science models can help solve some of the most pressing issues on social media. Another exciting aspect of my research is that, because it’s highly interdisciplinary, there is a lot of knowledge transfer between social networks and other information networks like wireless networks (which is my industry background), so a lot of the same advanced techniques can be used. What is your fondest memory? I was fortunate enough to work with several accomplished teams to publish 16 publications (two are forthcoming). However, getting my first primary authored paper published gave me a sense of pride. The paper shows how users in social networks tend to adopt information campaigns similar to how people adopt new technologies. For example, you have people that are early adopters of new technologies like the latest iPhone, and similarly, there are initiators and amplifiers of new social media campaigns. The stages of adoption are part of a well known theory known as the Diffusion of Innovations. My work takes inspiration from this theory, and I applied new stages of adoption for the information environment. What do you think about Elon Musk buying Twitter? I think his goal of having transparency is good since everything we do online is publicly available. He鈥檒l likely introduce innovative ideas and be less restrictive, while making the platform more open-sourced. He鈥檚 mentioned he hopes the platform will become less polarized, which would provide for some interesting behavior analysis by our COSMOS group. It will be interesting to see what happens. How are you going to celebrate your graduation? We鈥檒l probably keep it simple and go out for a nice dinner with the family. My middle son is also graduating high school in a few weeks, so we might have a combined celebration, but I don鈥檛 want to take away from his big accomplishment during this time too. It will be exciting for everyone! This story was compiled by Toni Boyer.]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock researchers investigate information campaigns designed to influence 2019 Canadian election /news-archive/2020/10/22/cosmos-canadian-election-research/ Thu, 22 Oct 2020 17:38:05 +0000 /news/?p=77672 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock researchers investigate information campaigns designed to influence 2019 Canadian election]]> The article, 鈥淭he Role of YouTube during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election: A Multi-Method Analysis of Online Discourse and Information Actors,鈥 was published in the Journal of Future Conflict in September. 鈥淲e have been extending our focus from blogs and Twitter to YouTube because the popular and interactive video-sharing platform with more than one billion users has become a tool to spread disinformation and propaganda by a variety of hostile actors,鈥 said lead author Katrin Galeano, who is earning a Ph.D. in computer and information science at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. The study鈥檚 co-authors include Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and fellow 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock student researchers from the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Rick Galeano, Esther Mead, Billy Spann, and Joseph Kready. The study focused on the video-sharing platform YouTube and its relevance on the election. The researchers analyzed data from YouTube to identify how inorganic behaviors attempt to shape perceptions of audiences in Canada. The study combines multiple social media analysis techniques, social cyber forensic methods, content analysis, and mathematical-sociological constructs to determine whether online influence campaigns were executed via YouTube. “This work presents novel scientific methodologies to examine influence operations conducted on social media platforms such as YouTube and reveal key malicious actors, groups, their tactics, and attack vectors,” said Dr. Nitin Agarwal, director of COSMOS and a co-author of the study. “We also demonstrate the need for more research in the social cybersecurity domain to not only shore up our defenses but also develop proactive strategies to prevent such attacks in the first place.”
Dr. Nitin Agarwal

Dr. Nitin Agarwal

According to a report published by the Ryerson University Social Media Lab in 2017, 59 percent of Canadian adults use YouTube, and 48 percent of Canadian adults use it daily. Since social media websites are so interconnected, it isn鈥檛 only YouTube users who are affected by these information campaigns. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 important to note that it鈥檚 easy to share videos on YouTube to other social media platforms,鈥 Galeano said. 鈥淭he audience might not start at YouTube, but they are being directed to YouTube from various platforms.鈥 Influence operations have been at work for more than a century to shape public opinion, but the advent of social media platforms has made it far easier and faster to create misinformation campaigns to influence voters. A recent example is the well-documented interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. 鈥淣umerous information actors used influence campaigns to gain the attention of the American public,鈥 the study said. 鈥淭eenagers in Macedonia, for instance, published far-right fake news articles on their blogs, disseminated links through social media, and earned money from the traffic that was being driven to their sites.鈥 The researchers sought to identify coordinated disinformation dissemination campaigns and computational crowd manipulation tactics on YouTube. The data analysis revealed that non-state actors did not make up a large percentage of the channels, videos, or engagement metrics. What was revealed was that YouTube channels of both mainstream and online-only media outlets resonated the most, despite the evidence that activists/social media influencers dominated the sphere of influence. Using topic analysis, the researchers determined that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau鈥檚 name was the most commonly used term in the video titles and descriptions. Other popular topics include rival candidates Andrew Scheer, Maxime Bernier, and Jagmeet Singh, as well as political scandals and key issues like immigration, climate, and carbon tax. The researchers identified 75 unique channels on YouTube that published 6,019 videos and 1,188,928 comments about the Canadian federal election between Jan. 1, 2019, and Oct. 31, 2019. These channels included news outlets (12), political candidates and their parties (15), and activists and influencers (48). The researchers found that media channels resonated at a higher rate with the audience. Even though activists had influencers had a much higher number of channels, media channels published almost twice as much content and received significantly higher views and audience engagement through likes, dislikes, and comments. As for foreign influence on the election, the study found that nine, or 12 percent, of the 75 channels originated from non-state actors. One example of a non-state actor was RT, a Russian government-funded news agency and its subsidiary Ruptly, which made up .6 percent of overall views and .9 percent of all media views. 鈥淪ince non-state actors did not make up a large percentage of the channels, videos nor engagement metrics, we do not believe that these channels significantly influenced the federal election,鈥 the study states. 鈥淭he influential information actors were state media making up 20 percent of the channels but publishing more than 50 percent of all videos and claiming 73 percent of total views, as well as the majority of the interaction metrics of likes, dislikes, and comments.鈥 Social cyber forensics identified that the channel with the highest number of commenters acted extremely evasively by hiding IP addresses and redirecting audiences once they clicked on a link. Cyber forensic analysis identified information activity campaigns that led the researchers to more thoroughly investigate public-facing webpages published by nefarious actors. Rebel News, a right-wing Canadian media news and commentary website, is the channel that had the highest number of commenters in the network and showed tactics that 鈥渉ave the properties of a large-scale information maneuver.鈥 The website鈥檚 owner employed information maneuvering tactics and increased their digital footprint by registering 291 domain names and driving traffic back to their original website through redirections. Most of the Rebel Media domain names contain controversial subjects. Users who visit these websites are then redirected back to Rebel Media with a story about the same controversial topics. Despite the high level of anti-Trudeau content that was published, Trudeau was re-elected by a narrow victory over his rival Andrew Scheer. With such close numbers at the polls, the researchers said that failure to incorporate YouTube and other social media outlets to counter the online discourse could have surely led to an upset for the election. 鈥淐anada is a little different than the United States,鈥 Galeano said. 鈥淲e found out that there are several media outlets that used YouTube heavily. Several were against Justin Trudeau. They used various tactics to convince the public that he is not the right person to be leading the country. In one case, we found 291 different website domains that are forwarded to one site website with different campaigns to try to discredit Justin Trudeau.鈥 With the U.S. election coming up next month, Galeano would warn Americans to be on the lookout for online information campaigns that are trying to influence their decisions. 鈥淲e do think that something similar is happening with the U.S. election,鈥 Galeano said. 鈥淚t is not only the politicians who have an agenda and are trying to convince the voters to vote one way or another. There is a lot of online propaganda. They are state and non-state actors. They are individuals and organizations, and there is usually an agenda behind it. That is most definitely going on in this election.鈥 This research is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OIA-1946391, OIA-1920920, IIS-1636933, ACI-1429160, and IIS-1110868), U.S. Office of Naval Research (N00014-10-1-0091, N00014-14-1-0489, N00014-15-P-1187, N00014-16-1-2016, N00014-16-1-2412, N00014-17-1-2675, N00014-17-1-2605, N68335-19-C-0359, N00014-19-1-2336, N68335-20-C-0540), U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF-17-S-0002, W911NF-16-1-0189), U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (W31P4Q-17-C-0059), Arkansas Research Alliance, and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.]]>