/news-archive/tag/collaboratorium-for-social-media-and-online-behavioral-studies/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Thu, 19 May 2022 13:10:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2022/05/19/maryam-maleki-graduation/ Thu, 19 May 2022 13:10:39 +0000 /news/?p=81586 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Grad Investigates Spread of Misinformation Through Social Media]]> She leaves 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock with a Ph.D. in systems engineering and a plan to enter the world of academia. Maleki has already received multiple job offers to teach at universities across the country. Maleki joined the (COSMOS) under Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and combined her background in systems engineering with social media research to study how misinformation spreads online following models that also predict the spread of infectious diseases. 鈥淢y research is focused on spreading misinformation on social media, especially Twitter,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 used my background in systems engineering to develop mathematical models and statistical analyses to evaluate the spread of misinformation on Twitter.鈥� Maleki also evaluates the influence of bots on the spread of fake news and misinformation and evaluates how her model can predict the spread of misinformation that is posted by humans versus bots. Last year, she appeared on to discuss how misinformation spreads and effective ways to thwart it. Maleki credits the COSMOS team for making her feel right at home with the international team of researchers at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. 鈥淚 really want to thank all Cosmographers for supporting me and helping me,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 really hope that in my next career as an assistant professor that I can collaborate and help my students. When I leave here, I would like to continue my collaboration and publication with the researchers at COSMOS. This group is one of the best that I ever worked with, and I was lucky to get the opportunity to work with them.鈥漖]> /news-archive/2022/05/18/cosmos-grant/ Wed, 18 May 2022 13:18:05 +0000 /news/?p=81293 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Awarded $165K Grant to Support Research Efforts to Monitor Cyber Warfare Tactics on Social Media]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock is one of 81 institutions across 35 states who received a total of through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), a Department of Defense (DoD) initiative that supports purchases of major research equipment to augment current and develop new capabilities. 鈥淒URIP awards provide essential research infrastructure to enable the pursuit of new knowledge and help maintain cutting-edge capabilities of our universities,鈥� said Dr. Bindu Nair, Director, Basic Research Office, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. 鈥淭he awards will sustain the scientific excellence of our universities, train the next generation of STEM workforce, and facilitate scientific advances that will drive unparalleled military capabilities for our country.鈥� This effort enables universities to perform state-of-the-art research that boosts the United States鈥� technological edge, while ensuring that our future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce remains second to none. The highly competitive award program is administered through a merit competition jointly by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office, and Office of Naval Research. Agarwal, founding director of the (COSMOS) at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, received the grant from the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research. The grant will provide equipment for a high-density, computational environment that will help scale up research efforts and support the , a monitoring tool for video-based social media platforms. The grant will provide COSMOS with a series of upgrades to the research center鈥檚 computational servers that will enable faster computation, more storage, and near real-time analysis of multimedia data from social media platforms. By supporting a data analytics bridge between various tools, the equipment will enable further discovery and analysis, data and knowledge exchange among stakeholders. COSMOS researchers specialize in analyzing deviant activities on social media, including the identification of influential actors, their strategies, and tactics. Some of this research includes disinformation campaigns in the Indo-Pacific region, COVID-19 discourse, and highly sophisticated organizational tactics by adversarial actors who use social media to conduct disinformation campaigns, provoke hysteria, radicalize, and coordinate nefarious acts. Studies examining adversarial information campaigns often focus on primarily text-based posts on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The rapid growth in popularity of video-based platforms and the rampant mis/disinformation campaigns on them pose computational and scalability challenges for the researchers that the grant will address. 鈥淒ue to inadequate computational resources, much of the research is conducted at a small scale, say, a few thousand videos,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淗owever, one of the most popular video-based social media platforms, YouTube, receives more than 300 hours of videos in under one minute. Existing research methodologies need to be enhanced to meet the new information environment.鈥� The problem is compounded by the rapid expansion of the social media landscape. Emerging non-mainstream and multimedia-rich platforms, such as TikTok, Parler, and Clubhouse, have become preferred choices for adversarial actors or groups to propagate hate speech and disinformation content that garners quick but substantial attention. This disinformation-riddled content often spills over to mainstream platforms.鈥漖]> /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.]]> /news-archive/2022/02/25/cosmos-covid-misinformation/ Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:58:40 +0000 /news/?p=80951 ... COSMOS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Research into Dynamics of COVID-19 Misinformation Themes]]> The researchers received the award from the Seventh International Conference on held in Nice, France. The researchers used computational techniques to help reveal the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes that assist in forecasting and proactive policy making. The paper鈥檚 authors include Thomas Marcoux, a doctoral student from Orl茅ans, France, Dr. Esther Mead, who graduated from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in 2020 with a Ph.D. in computer and information science and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at COSMOS, and Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of COSMOS. 鈥淭he paper proposes a methodology to visualize the evolution of misinformation narratives over time,鈥� Marcoux said. 鈥淲hile it relies on public data and is not intrusive, my hope is that we can progressively reduce the need for such tools. I hope the study can shed some light on the misinformation phenomenon, and help readers get a better grasp of the complexity of online narratives.鈥� The research is intended to help sociologists, journalists, and politicians understand the movements of online trends involving misinformation to help report information, make decisions, and set policies. 鈥淚t is an honor to have been able to work alongside such great researchers on this very important work that illustrates the fact that misinformation stories can be identified on social media and tracked and visualized over time,鈥� Mead said. 鈥淭his capability can be immediately used by social media administrators, governmental organizations, other researchers, and any other collaborative effort towards stemming the misinformation problem.鈥� The research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Australian DSTO, Entergy, and Arkansas Research Alliance. 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/2022/02/11/agarwal-it-arkansas/ Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:47:31 +0000 /news/?p=80999 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Expert Nitin Agarwal Featured as Leader in IT Arkansas Magazine]]> In the article, 鈥淗ow Anti-Social is Social Media,鈥� Dr. Agarwal describes why military and government agencies are so interested in what鈥檚 happening online. The article can be found on pages 14-15 on . In his second role as director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, Dr. Agarwal and his team of student researchers study online deviant behaviors that include cyber flash mobs, weaponization of information, radical and extremist groups, propaganda dissemination, misinformation, and fake news. 鈥淭here have always been cases in which social media was abused or exploited, whether to sow discord, create chaos, or undermine trust in democratic and scientific institutions of a society,鈥� Dr. Agarwal said. 鈥淭hese deviant behaviors affect the democratic societies of the world, which are known for their openness to viewpoints. Countries like Russia or China are known to selectively quash narratives through strict content moderation policies. However, such policies infringe upon freedom of speech. Therefore, adversarial actors, whether state sponsored or non-state sponsored, extremist groups or terrorists, find it easier to target democracies around the world.鈥� Dr. Agarwal and COSMOS have partnered with many agencies, including the Department of Defense, NATO, National Science Foundation, DARPA, Department of Homeland Security, who are interested in identifying how social media can be used to combat emerging cyber threats. You can read Dr. Agarwal鈥檚 full interview on when social media becomes . Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support of the agencies funding the studies.]]> /news-archive/2022/01/31/cosmos-covert-online-influence/ Mon, 31 Jan 2022 16:48:32 +0000 /news/?p=80894 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Receives DoD Grant to Research Covert Online Information Campaigns]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock is partnering on the five-year project, 鈥淢ulti-Level Models of Covert Online Information Campaigns,鈥� with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Regina, and The Atlantic Council. Total funding for the project, which is headed by Dr. Kathleen Carley of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is about $5 million. , Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of COSMOS, will serve as principal investigator for 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, which will receive $456,657 to study online information campaigns during elections, protests, and other major events in the Indo-Pacific region. Influence campaigns are becoming more sophisticated as they are often well orchestrated, spread across multiple social media platforms, and conducted by humans, bots, and cyborg-like actors in a flash-mob style coordination manner. Agarwal defines influence campaigns as information designed and shared to sway public opinion or manipulate people’s beliefs and behaviors. 鈥淎dvanced tactics and maneuvers are used to amplify the messages,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淔or instance, narratives are framed in blogs and YouTube videos, which are then shared on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and other such platforms. Links to blog posts and YouTube videos are massively amplified using bots, which drive traffic to respective blog posts or YouTube videos. Traffic amplification further leads to the content being recommended more, which creates a feeding frenzy. Such a tactic is known as algorithmic manipulation.鈥� In this project, COSMOS is studying similar tactics deployed in online covert influence campaigns concentrated on the Indo-Pacific region. COSMOS will use its programs, VTracker and BTracker, to collect information from YouTube and blogs. The data will be used to track a video or a blog post鈥檚 dissemination across multiple media platforms and their influence. Some of the narratives that COSMOS researchers are tracking online include:

• Efforts to increase Chinese social, economic, political, and cultural hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region
• Efforts to undermine U.S. leadership in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region
• U.S. military efforts in the Indo-Pacific region is meant to create a war with China and Russia
• Countries in Southeast Asia must rise with China to find alternatives against America鈥檚 primacy in Asia.
• The Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are secretly U.S. proxies or Saudi-backed ISIS militants

COSMOS researchers will use a collective action theory-based model, social network theories, and social influence theory to lay the groundwork for detecting coordination and measuring the power of the online influence campaigns. 鈥淭his will help in identifying key actors, key groups, coordination strategies, and tactics indicating coordinated content engagement boosting, such as 鈥榮piked鈥� views, likes, commenter mobs, etc.,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淎side from the social network theory-based analysis, we will study the content captured from YouTube, blogs, Reddit, and other social media platforms to assess inflammatory speech and text that evoke certain emotions using tonality/toxicity assessment.鈥� Coordination behaviors and tactics detected from these social media platforms will be mapped to a framework developed by Dr. Carley at CMU. This will help in characterization of such tactics in covert online influence campaigns and enable further experimentation with countermeasures. 鈥淪uch a comparison would help develop a characterization of information maneuvers and media platforms, which maneuvers are more prevalent on a particular social media platform, or which platforms are more suited for a particular information maneuver,鈥� Agarwal said. The grant is managed by the Office of Naval Research and awarded under the DoD鈥檚 Minerva Research Initiative. Minerva that focuses on topics of particular relevance to U.S. national security. Through its network of faculty investigators, Minerva also strengthens the department鈥檚 connections with the social science community and helps DOD better understand and prepare for future challenges, including National Defense Strategy priorities such as great power competition. The Minerva Research Initiative is jointly administered by the Basic Research Office and the Strategy and Force Development Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in partnership with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research. 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock鈥檚 COSMOS is also partnering with Arizona State University and Nanyang Technological University on another DoD Minerva Research Initiative grant, 鈥�Fusing Narrative and Social Cyber Forensics to Understand Covert Influence.鈥� COSMOS is conducting social network and cyber forensic analysis to examine online activity and the dissemination of ideas and elements of these narratives. Since 2009, COSMOS has received more than $15 million in funding from the DoD to conduct research. 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 Office of Naval Research.]]> /news-archive/2021/10/27/cybersecurity-student-profile-lt-col-rick-galeano/ Wed, 27 Oct 2021 13:14:36 +0000 /news/?p=80245 ... Cybersecurity Student Profile: Lt. Col. Rick Galeano]]> Lt. Col. Rick Galeano is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. He is the deputy director of information warfare at Special Operations Command Africa for the U.S. Army and is currently assigned overseas. As a research fellow with Dr. Nitin Agarwal鈥檚 (COSMOS), he studies social and human factors of cybersecurity by researching the topic from a cyber warfare angle. What kind of work do you do in your career with the U.S. Army? All of us work in a complex environment. New technology and the rapid dissemination of information has allowed us to work in this ecosystem of the new digital information environment. I happen to be one of a select few information operations officers that have the opportunity to work at the tip of the spear in this career field for the U.S. Army. My job supports Commander decisions to integrate different IRCs (information-related capabilities) into the information environment. How did you join 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock as a doctoral student in the information science program? In 2011, I was a student at Naval Postgraduate School pursuing a M.S. in Information Science. My interest was sparked in information science after taking several graduate courses in game theory, which eventually evolved into learning about social network analysis. This was a stepping stone to study how networks are formed and what propagates diffusion amongst actors in a network. Subsequently, after graduation, and a few publications later; an opportunity was presented which allowed me to apply and be accepted as a Ph.D. student in 2017 at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. You have devoted countless hours in the lab identifying the tactics, techniques, and procedures that are often the result of hostile acts against users. Can you tell us more about the research you do at COSMOS? I joined COSMOS and have been working in the realm of cybersecurity and identifying different features and aspects of it for several years. YouTube, for example, is one of many platforms that our fellow researchers continue to explore. In this platform, we have identified good and bad information actors that have access and reach throughout networks. For example a commenter may want to amplify or distort the narrative, create a toxic/trolling environment for other viewers, or exploit YouTube鈥檚 recommendation algorithms by flashflooding/flashmobbing the comment space 鈥� a behavior that misleads YouTube鈥檚 algorithms into believing that the video is going viral resulting in rank elevation. Sometimes, it is difficult to identify who or what is the source of message manipulation, but the large team of scientists that make up COSMOS helps accelerate identification. One of my own favorite pieces of research was, Weak Ties to the Narrative Rescue: Starbucks Arrest Controversy Case Study. That research provided the rationale as to how weak ties promulgated messaging through natural occurrences resulting in Starbucks quickly regaining a positive external communication narrative. This was in response to the April 2018 Starbucks incident where the coffee chain appeared to be biased against African Americans in Philadelphia. The data and the messaging that was in this data set is an excellent base study that will tweak one鈥檚 interest into this field. Botnet Evolution During Modern Day Large-Scale Combat Operations, is another one my favorite publications. This research identified social bots that have been introduced to the constantly evolving information environment. Their sole purpose was to shape and influence perceptions and cognitively trigger behavioral change on an exponentially massive scale worldwide. The goal of malicious influencers was to influence the information environment by amplifying social media followership in the form of 鈥渟ocial bots鈥濃�攕cripted codes that mimic human users and serve as super-spreaders of information. These social bots were used to promote particular points of view, fabricate perception of popularity or popular viewpoint, muddle the discourse and narrative space, and/or served as a means to bolster these points of view by promoting blogs or other digital content. Effects can ranged across the physical, cognitive, and informational dimensions to ultimately trigger specific behaviors in individuals and groups that impacted the operational environment in a way that is beneficial to those who operate the bots. You are coming up on your last year of coursework before you begin your dissertation. What will your dissertation focus on? It will fall within the social network analysis lane. I will look at what is happening within information actors, how messages or organizations are manipulating the information environment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it鈥檚 all about human behavior. It鈥檚 also botnet behavior that is manipulated by humans that are trying to change the behaviors of the end users, whether that is influencing us to vote a certain way, or buy a different product like laundry detergent, or to go to a certain location. There is a continued need for academia to conduct exploratory analysis across the information environment, thus enabling cybersecurity specialists to develop and update both hardware and software to counter malicious behavior, all the while stressing that education and informing users of how to operate safely is key to prevention of data leaks, password spillages, or unprovoked attacks in this vast domain. You mentioned that one of the ways hackers or bots could use your personal information is to influence you to buy a product, like a different type of laundry detergent. Most people won鈥檛 be worried about laundry detergent. What kind of damage can cybersecurity attacks really cause? In this day and age, the digital information environment continues to rapidly evolve, oftentimes with actors pushing misinformation with the intent of conducting behavior change targeting individuals to large corporations. One recent example is the 2021 ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline which disrupted the gasoline supply chain across the eastern seaboard of the United States. Investigators identified a compromised Virtual Private Network (VPN) password as the critical vulnerability in this attack. Ransomware attacks are perpetuated by malware that locks computer data behind a wall with the perpetrators demanding a ransom to unlock the systems. Another example in 2021 was a cyberattack that disrupted COVID-19 vaccine scheduling web site in Central Italy. This attack caused mayhem for a region that had already been hit extremely hard by the pandemic. Despite the attack, the Italian government pushed forward with vaccinations but with a temporary inefficiency as well as disruptions to those trying to get vaccinated. Lastly, imagine a lack of electricity at a hospital or a power disruption to a city’s traffic lights. The bad news is that has happened with Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) attacks. Off the top of my head, one attack of this nature was a 2015 attack at a Ukrainian nuclear power facility which affected hundreds of thousands of end users who lost power to include hospitals and traffic lights. A series of phishing emails allowed for penetration into their network which allowed for this event to occur. Why do you think Cybersecurity Awareness Month is important? These are some of the many reasons that Cybersecurity Awareness Month brings to the forefront. We are in our 18th year of Cybersecurity Awareness Month.听 That is important because we see this reflected across the U.S. as consumers become more connected to rapid information flow that the internet provides to us. From a quick credit card transaction at Walmart to a post that you add to your Instagram account, we need to synthesize how information is processed and what vulnerabilities are out there. Smart technology exists all around us. Alexa listens to what we say and security cameras monitor what we do. Our homes and workplaces are filled with more Internet of Things (IoT) each day which opens up routes for cybercriminals to penetrate The Internet of Things What advice would you give people to keep themselves safe from cybersecurity attacks? 鈥淚f you are going to connect it, protect it.鈥� It is imperative that you, as the user, ensure that software updates are made to your digital devices when they are published. This is a pretty easy task to accomplish. Users must continually remain vigilant of what is lurking in the digital domain, software such as anti-virus (and ensuring it is up to date) is one way to mitigate risk. Additionally, the use of VPNs provide an additional layer of protection, especially when using public Wi-Fi. Although neither are a failsafe, they do increase security making it more difficult for malicious attacks to occur. Keep your passwords secure! Don’t get fooled by phishing attacks! With privacy settings, turn off your geolocation setting on your devices. There are a lot of in-app advertisements that are geared toward geolocation services. Geotargeted advertising uses location data to reach consumers based on what their phone or other device identifies as where you are at. You can opt in or opt out of these types of services in your locations services on your mobile device. My last piece of advice is to think before you click. There is no delete button on the internet! Once you post something to YouTube or send an email, it鈥檚 already out there. And the reverse of that is true when you receive an email, use common sense, if the email looks suspicious or out of the ordinary, do not go clicking around on hyperlinks that are embedded in it!]]> /news-archive/2021/08/16/agarwal-research-covert-online-influence/ Mon, 16 Aug 2021 16:23:33 +0000 /news/?p=79534 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Joins DOD-Funded International Research Project to Investigate Covert Online Influence]]> 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock will receive $691,339 for its part of the project, which began in February and will conclude in 2025. Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and distinguished professor of information science and director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (), will serve as principal investigator for 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. The four-year project, 鈥淔using Narrative and Social Cyber Forensics to Understand Covert Influence,鈥� is headed by Dr. Scott Ruston, a research professor with Arizona State University鈥檚 Global Security Initiative. Additional research partners include Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and experts from Indonesia and the Philippines. Countries can use the ease of information access via new media technologies to create manipulation through disinformation and propaganda, which can cause adverse effects on sovereignty and political stability. This research will help fill the knowledge gap the U.S. faces with regard to China鈥檚 engagement in 鈥渋nformationized鈥� warfare, and will more broadly establish a model for effective analysis of strategic influence in the Middle East, Europe, and other regions. 鈥淚ncreasing proliferation of social media provides tremendous opportunities for gaining situational awareness to assist with strategic policy making, particularly in defense, security, diplomacy, and foreign policy,鈥� said Dr. Agarwal. 鈥淗owever, social media data is often riddled with challenges such as high volume and velocity, noisy data, missing data, and incomplete data. This project will develop computational, systematic, and rigorous methods that are grounded in social science theories and cyber forensic methodologies to study big social media data and surmount the challenges.鈥� The grant is managed by the Office of Naval Research and awarded under the DoD鈥檚 Minerva Research Initiative. Minerva that focuses on topics of particular relevance to U.S. national security. Through its network of faculty investigators, Minerva also strengthens the department鈥檚 connections with the social science community and helps DOD better understand and prepare for future challenges, including National Defense Strategy priorities such as great power competition. 鈥淲e live in a dynamic world, and many of the challenges we face are social or have social elements,鈥� said Dr. Bindu Nair, director of the Basic Research Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. 鈥淭he knowledge and methodologies generated by Minerva teams are fundamental to understanding how social forces shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the United States.鈥� The researchers will study online influence targeting Indonesia and the Philippines that uses narratives to manipulate public opinion and create political action favoring China. Subject matter experts in Indonesia and the Philippines will identify issues prone to influence in each country, as well as insight into online venues of influence, propaganda, and disinformation. They will also analyze how narratives circulating in the information environment align with Chinese strategy and national interests. Dr. Agarwal and his team at COSMOS will conduct social network and cyber forensic analysis to examine online activity and the dissemination of ideas and elements of these narratives. They will also observe virtual proxies of political action. 鈥淭he grant will allow us to develop research-based models and operationalize them in our social media monitoring tools, and to assist the United States defense in countering cyber-threats in an emerging socio-technical context, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region,鈥� Dr. Agarwal said. The Minerva Research Initiative is jointly administered by the Basic Research Office and the Strategy and Force Development Office in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in partnership with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research.]]> /news-archive/2021/06/11/adeola-adesoba-ibm-internship/ Fri, 11 Jun 2021 13:46:17 +0000 /news/?p=79138 ... Adesoba selected for data science internship at IBM]]> Adeola Adesoba, a graduate student at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, has been selected for a competitive summer internship with IBM.听 Adesoba will work as a cognitive engineer/data science graduate intern with IBM鈥檚 Global Business Services Team from June 1 to Aug. 13. 鈥淚BM is such a large tech organization,鈥� Adesoba said. 鈥淏eing recognized as someone with the skills they are looking for made me excited. As a data scientist, I will utilize IBM鈥檚 technologies to build solutions for the world鈥檚 most difficult challenges and help our clients do the same.鈥� As an intern, Adesoba will be responsible for successful delivery of data science solutions and services in a client consulting environment. She will lead strategy discussions and help to design and develop a solution that meets client鈥檚 goals and outcomes. She will also define key business problems to be solved and formulate mathematical approaches and gather data to solve those problems. Adesoba is a native of Nigeria who is pursuing a M.S. in information quality. After graduating with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in statistics from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, Adesoba worked as a credit risk analyst with Nigerian banks before joining 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. She is also a graduate research assistant with the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) and a Devops engineer intern with nClouds. Adesoba is planning to graduate in December. 鈥淚 believe the internship will be a stepping stone for me as a data scientist,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 am very excited and grateful for the opportunity. I鈥檓 just very excited to start in June and get my hands on this real work industry experience that will give me a head start in my career when I graduate.鈥�]]> /news-archive/2021/05/12/seun-johnson-commencement/ Wed, 12 May 2021 16:54:23 +0000 /news/?p=79018 ... International Student Seun Johnson Earns Master鈥檚 Degree and New Career at Intuit]]> After traveling from Nigeria to earn a graduate degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Oluwaseun 鈥淪eun鈥� Johnson is graduating this month with a master鈥檚 degree in information science and a new career at Intuit, Inc.听 Johnson will begin his new job as a software engineer with Intuit in June and will be moving to Mountain View, California, where the company鈥檚 headquarters are located, later this year. 鈥淚 feel happy that I am graduating,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淲hen I look back to when I first came to 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, I feel like I鈥檝e achieved a lot. I have a good portfolio and a new job, and I am happy.鈥� A native of Lagos, Nigeria, Johnson received his bachelor鈥檚 degree in industrial physics and applied geophysics from Covenant University in Nigeria. He learned about 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock through a friend who was studying abroad. At the time, Johnson was working as a data scientist for Petrodata Management Services Limited in Lagos and has a background in data mining, data visualization, and software development. 鈥淢y friend told me about 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and all the opportunities here, and I thought I could be a good fit for the Information Science Program,鈥� Johnson said. 鈥淚 found Dr. Nitin Agarwal in the Information Science department, and I told him about my interests and showed him what I was working on.鈥� Johnson moved to Little Rock in 2019 and has put his skills to work at COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies) with Dr. Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, who said he is extremely proud of Johnson鈥檚 accomplishments. 鈥淒espite the unique challenges presented by COVID-19, our students continue to demonstrate resolve and resilience,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淥ur students come from different parts of the world. Many belong to minority and underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines 鈥� a cause that COSMOS champions and celebrates. They join COSMOS to hone their skills, develop solutions for real-world problems that contribute to social good and innovation, and transform into thought leaders.鈥� At COSMOS, Johnson worked as one of the lead developers of the Blogtrackers tool that helps COSMOS conduct discourse analysis and event analysis on blogs, including assessment of misinformation and fake news. 鈥淭he COSMOS team gave me the opportunity to learn new things and to build myself as a software engineer,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 enjoyed meeting new people in Little Rock and learning things from new people all over the world.鈥�听 Last year, Johnson was one of three students selected for the third annual Grad Cohort for Underrepresented Minorities and Persons with Disabilities Workshop by the Computing Research Association. The prestigious workshop brings together students and industry professionals from around the country to prepare graduate students for careers in the computer science industry. During summer 2020, Johnson worked as a data science intern at Windstream Holdings. He created an automated workflow for text mapping/cross referencing for data migration and created an automated workflow for tracking and updating projects using Python. Johnson recently completed his master鈥檚 project, 鈥淥ptimizing Data Ingestion and Retrieval for Narrative Analysis Using Parallel Pools and Elastic Research.鈥� The project solves the problem of slow data ingestion and retrieval for the narrative analysis page on the Blogtrackers web application.听 鈥淲hen storing big data on any storage platform, it is not unusual to encounter performance issues as the ingested data can dramatically impact the performance and usefulness of a data lake,鈥� he said. 鈥淎 proper data ingestion mechanism should optimize storage for analytic performance, which is often best done upon ingestion. This process will also avoid data loss and redundancies when processing streams of data.鈥�]]>