/news-archive/tag/blogtrackers/ ����Vlog��ý Little Rock Wed, 30 Jan 2019 15:03:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2019/01/30/cosmos-tech-demonstration-series/ Wed, 30 Jan 2019 15:03:49 +0000 /news/?p=73237 ... U.S. State Department officials view how technology can help government agencies battle foreign propaganda]]> Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock demonstrated to visiting government officials how web-based, social-media tracking technology programs can help government agencies identify and analyze foreign propaganda and disinformation. , Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and his research team at the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies (), are one of 14 groups nationwide participating in the U.S. State Department’s tech demo program to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation threats from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. hosted members of the Department of State Nov. 28 as part of the Other members of the delegation who joined via video conference included representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, United States Central Command, and other agencies. Members of the Technology Demonstration Series are touring the country to view technologies that can help achieve its mission to “lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the federal government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The work of the GEC is focused around four core areas: science and technology, interagency engagement, partner engagement, and content production. During the visit, COSMOS researchers showcased technologies like Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker, two of COSMOS’ latest applications that help monitor conversations and discourse on social media platforms. These applications further help in tracking information actors and narratives as disinformation is disseminated through social networks including blogs, YouTube, and Twitter. YouTubeTracker demonstrates expansion in COSMOS’ research goals from understanding how people consume media via reading to including viewing-oriented information consumption. “The younger generations consume information more by viewing than reading, so they are becoming susceptible to disinformation that is prevalent on video-based social media platforms,” Agarwal said. Blogtrackers and YouTube trackers use algorithms that can quickly sift through massive amounts of social media data, but also target the right signals toward users who are trying to manipulate the data. Algorithmic warfare is becoming an increasingly hot topic as companies like Google, Twitter, and YouTube have realized that the algorithms they use to search and recommend content to their users are susceptible to manipulation by outside forces, Agarwal said. As an example, hackers could target Google’s search algorithms to make a website with false information appear higher in search results, therefore making the website look legitimate. In the upper right photo, members of COSMOS and the Department of State discuss how COSMOS’ technology can assist in the identification and analysis of propaganda and disinformation.]]> /news-archive/2018/05/25/tech-demo/ Fri, 25 May 2018 16:25:16 +0000 /news/?p=70673 ... ����Vlog��ý Little Rock professor joins program to fight the spread of foreign propaganda]]> University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and social media infiltration expert Dr. Nitin Agarwal has been selected as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Tech Demo program to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.�� Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, leads (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock. Agarwal’s team of researchers is one of 14 groups throughout the country that is participating in the program, which is organized by the that is charged with leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. During the next six months, those participating in the program will be invited to present their research to U.S. State Department officials, who are expected to visit ����Vlog��ý Little Rock in November. Agarwal and COSMOS researchers will showcase technologies like Blogtrackers and YouTube trackers, one of COSMOS’ latest applications. These applications track information providers and narratives as misinformation is disseminated through social media networks including blogs, YouTube, and Twitter. The research is the result of projects supported by millions of dollars in federal grants. YouTube trackers demonstrates expansion in COSMOS’ research goals from understanding how people consume media via reading to including viewing-oriented information consumption. “The younger generations consume information more by viewing than reading, so they are becoming susceptible to disinformation that is prevalent on video-based social media platforms,” he said. The key to the success of programs like Blogtrackers and YouTube trackers is developing efficient algorithms that can quickly sift through massive amounts of social media data, but also target the right signals, Agarwal said. “There are often two main motivations for using YouTube,” he said. “One motivation is monetization. People can make a lot of money off of YouTube, so they want their content displayed in as many places as possible. The second motivation is manipulation. There are also malicious or adversarial actors who eventually want to steer your thinking toward a specific agenda. Once you know the intent of the users, we can pick up the right signals to acquire relevant data.” Algorithmic warfare is becoming an increasingly hot topic as companies like Google, Twitter, and YouTube have realized that the algorithms they use to search and recommend content to their users are susceptible to manipulation by outside forces, Agarwal said. As an example, hackers could target Google’s search algorithms to make a website with false information appear higher in search results, therefore making the website look legitimate. Agarwal attended the technology series’ kickoff event May 2 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs spoke at the event and emphasized the importance of this initiative as a way that the government is working with private industry to stem the spread of false narratives and to authenticate emerging information. “Foreign propaganda and disinformation clearly is not a new problem,” Nauert said. “However, the same technology that has put an ever-growing crowd-sourced encyclopedia in the hands of anyone with an internet connection, has also put a multimedia storyteller in almost everyone’s pocket. It is not always clear which messages may be sponsored by foreign governments or non-state actors. In this charged atmosphere, information – or more frequently its weaponized counterpart, disinformation – is emerging as the secret weapon used by our adversaries to tip the scales. We are at a crucial moment when we must define the problem and develop effective solutions consistent with the rule of law and our democratic norms and values. And we need the folks in this room to help us in that endeavor.”]]> /news-archive/2018/03/27/online-narratives-refugees/ Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:11:32 +0000 /news/?p=69838 ... Research explores how online narratives on refugees shift over time]]> A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock are studying how the mass migration of refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries into Europe has created a shift in the migrant narrative in online communication.�� The paper, “Analyzing Shift in Narratives Regarding Migrants in Europe via Blogosphere,” has been accepted in the workshop at the 40th annual, a premier conference in information retrieval, to be held March 26-29 in Grenoble, France. The lead author of the paper, , a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, will travel to France to present the research at the conference. The researchers analyzed blogs to study a shift in narratives in the blogosphere toward refugees or migrants in Europe from 2015 to 2016. They used the tool to analyze more than 9,000 posts that talked about the influx of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North African countries in Europe. “Social media is largely considered as a great democratizing platform,” Agarwal said. “However, not all voices are heard equally. Rather, only a few narratives get amplified, creating a democratic deficit. At a time where falsehoods travel faster and farther than truth, being able to computationally identify leading narratives would tremendously aid the information vetting process, helping the society in defeating disinformation.” Co-authors include, a third-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at COSMOS, Dr. Samer Al-khateeb, postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, and Agarwal. “There has been little research carried out in the computational narratology domain, and this paper puts forward an interesting case in identifying shift in narratives with respect to an event to know what resonates in the blogosphere for a given time period,” Bandeli said. “We rely on computational concepts to study these shifts.” In this paper, the researchers used the migrant crisis in Europe as a case study to observe the change in sentiments of citizens toward migrants from positive (sympathetic and supportive) to negative (angry) and to understand the shift in a narrative on the blogosphere. �� “Conventionally, human effort is needed to read text to identify any narrative,” Hussain said. “This paper is a first step in computationally identifying a shift in narratives. Improving on this method and transferring this laborious task to machines will make the narrative analysis scalable.” In the future, the researchers plan to build a model to identify the narrative in any given online text. “Employing such a model to continuously monitor streaming social media content can help detect any deviant narratives like misinformation or propaganda,” Hussain said. “Being able to identify deviant narratives at an early stage can help stem the spread of deviance on social media and build effective counter-narratives.” This work is supported in part by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Office, and the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowment at the ����Vlog��ý-Little Rock. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.]]> /news-archive/2018/03/09/blogtrackers-cosmos/ Fri, 09 Mar 2018 14:54:46 +0000 /news/?p=69729 ... ����Vlog��ý Little Rock student researcher is uncovering the secrets of the blogosphere]]> In February, more than 409 million people read the over 20.8 billion pages posted on , a popular blogging platform. Blogging remains a popular form of online communication that is growing at an exponential rate, yet few researchers have grasped the potential of data mining the blogosphere for research purposes.�� The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is among the very few universities in the country with a team and projects dedicated to researching blogs. One of the researchers heading this project is , a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a core researcher at COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair of Information Science. In 2009, Agarwal developed a program called Blogtrackers, a tool designed to track and analyze blogs and gain insights from the blogosphere. Through Blogtrackers, COSMOS has been actively working on research studies that are supported by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research in the fight against cyber propaganda campaigns and��tracked how anti-NATO groups reacted to information released during NATO’s exercises. Agarwal and Hussain also have trained NATO personnel to use Blogtrackers to analyze how false information and fake news stories are spread through social media. “There are not many universities who are analyzing blogs,” Hussain said. “Most just analyze Twitter, but they are missing out on a great social media platform. Almost all fake news is posted on blogs first and then linked to on Twitter. You cannot influence a person in 280 characters, but you can influence people through blog posts.” Hussain, a native of Hyderabad, India, graduated from Osmania University with a bachelor’s degree in information technology. While working as a systems engineer at Infosys, Hussain learned from a friend about research opportunities and graduate school options available at the College of Engineering and Information Technology at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock. �� “I had joined ����Vlog��ý Little Rock in 2014 to pursue my master’s degree in information quality with no intention to pursue a Ph.D., but the opportunity to work with Dr. Agarwal in COSMOS and developing the blog tracking tool led me to pursue my PhD. here,” he said. is currently in a beta stage and can only be accessed by researchers and others who have been trained to use it. However, Hussain is working to make Blogtrackers available for public use. “I want to set up an automated crawler in Blogtrackers so it can collect data on its own without much human intervention,” he said. “Once the pipeline is set up to collect data, it would allow people to set up their own data set of blogs and to analyze blogs for their own purposes.” In addition to researchers, Blogtrackers could be of great use to businesses, teachers, social scientists, journalists, public affairs personnel, and the military, Hussain noted. With Hussain set to graduate in December, he is pursuing opportunities to work in academia or for a research company. However, he would love to stay at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock to continue researching and developing Blogtrackers for public use in the near future. “I thank ����Vlog��ý Little Rock for introducing me to Dr. Agarwal,” he said. “����Vlog��ý Little Rock plays a big role in supporting these great research projects on campus. We are one of the very few universities in the country who are researching blogs. This cutting edge research will snowball into bigger things for the university and provide many research opportunities for students.” The Blogtrackers research project is supported in part by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the ����Vlog��ý 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.]]> /news-archive/2017/03/17/nato-training-course-social-media-analysis/ Fri, 17 Mar 2017 18:31:49 +0000 /news/?p=66636 ... ����Vlog��ý Little Rock professor and student to lead NATO training course on social media analysis]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy chair and professor of information science at ����Vlog��ý Little Rock, and his doctoral student, Nihal Hussain, will conduct a four-day social media analysis training course for (STRATCOM COE) at the Latvian Defense Academy March 21-24. “The social media analysis course will help end-users to better understand the online information environment,” Agarwal said. “We will be discussing our research on blogs and their role in propaganda dissemination, disinformation, and fake news. We will train the participants on the developed in my lab and social cyber forensics.” Agarwal, who also is the director of the ����Vlog��ý Little Rock Center of Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), is highly respected for his social media research. His recent research included studying how governments and groups such as ISIS use social media to spread deviant messages and affect opinions, behavior, and media coverage. Agarwal and two of his doctoral students presented their research findings during a NATO conference in October 2016. Agarwal and the students — Hussain and Samer Al-Khateeb ��— studied and tracked social media responses to NATO exercises during summer 2016, including anti-NATO narratives from pro-Russian outlets. �� Prior to the training course, Agarwal will also speak at a big data panel during the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence conference March 20. In the seminar, experts from academia, government, the private sector, and the media will provide insights and practical recommendations for NATO civilian and military personnel concerning the evolution of social media and its relevance. Nitin’s panel will focus on the use of digital forensics and investigations in the cyber domain. Additional speakers include Donara Barojan, a digital forensic research associate at Atlantic Council, and Chris Ryder, a senior human factors consultant at QinetiQ. In the upper left photo, Dr. Nitin Agarwal (left) and his doctoral students, Nihal Hussain (center) and Samer Al-Khateeb (right). Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/����Vlog��ýLR Communications.]]>