- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

COSMOS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Research into Dynamics of COVID-19 Misinformation Themes

John Hill — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:58:40 +0000

Researchers at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies () won the Best Paper Award for their paper studying the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes using topic streams. 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’s authors include Thomas Marcoux, a doctoral student from Orléans, France, Dr. Esther Mead, who graduated from ��Vlog��ý 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. “The paper proposes a methodology to visualize the evolution of misinformation narratives over time,” Marcoux said. “While 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.” 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. “It 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,” Mead said. “This capability can be immediately used by social media administrators, governmental organizations, other researchers, and any other collaborative effort towards stemming the misinformation problem.” 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.

Graduate Spotlight on Esther Mead

John Hill — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 20:02:48 +0000

Esther Mead is graduating from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock this month with a Ph.D. in integrated computing with an emphasis in information quality as well as post-doctoral research position to continue her research at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (). “Obtaining a Ph.D. represents the self-actualization of my highest academic goal,” Mead said. “It’s sort of like reaching the summit of a great mountain that you have been struggling to climb for several years. This has been my goal since I began my academic journey, and to have finally reached the summit is like a dream come true. I only wish that my father could have seen it.” Mead is a first-generation college student who earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Central Arkansas. She then taught marketing research and consumer behavior courses at San Diego State University for four years before returning to Arkansas to help care for her father, who had been diagnosed with prostate and bone cancer, and to pursue a Ph.D. “Although I was leaving a great position at SDSU, I could take the opportunity to achieve my highest academic goal,” Mead said. “When I arrived back home, however, I discovered that the problem was a lot more complicated than I had anticipated. Not only was my father suffering, but my youngest sister and her young son were also suffering from problems. Both my sister and her son have learning and behavioral disorders, and since they and my parents were all living in the same household, there was a great amount of disorder and tension.” Mead said she took one year to fully concentrate on helping her family. She cared for her father and helped her sister find a job and move to a new apartment before Mead moved to ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. In 2016, Mead entered the master’s degree program in business information systems at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. She discovered COSMOS after enrolling in the integrated computing doctoral program. “I was impressed by the level of professionalism and societal impact of the work that I had read that was coming out of the organization, and was immediately interested in figuring out a way to become part of the team,” Mead said. “As part of COSMOS, I have been privileged to be part of several important research works. These include numerous analyses of bots, toxicity, and misinformation campaigns on social media platforms.” Her research has aided in the identification and subsequent mitigation of malicious actors that infiltrate the public information space that have drastic effects on society. One of the research projects Mead participated in was a website that tracks the spread of misinformation regarding COVID-19. “There was a tremendous amount of disinformation circulating on social media platforms about COVID-19, which several of my family members believed!,” Mead said. “This led me to become involved in a COSMOS-led effort to create and curate a website that kept track of these various COVID-19 misinformation items and provided disproof. Additionally, I am continually taking great care to ensure that my elderly mother is staying safe, and likewise for my sister and her son.”�� During her time at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, Mead has found many mentors in the computer science and information science departments. “, for example, not only has given me the most professional and technical advice I have ever received as a student, but he is also extremely empathetic and optimistic,” Mead said. “Additionally, Dr. Mariofanna Milanova has given me a tremendous amount of one-on-one guidance and support. Dr. Elizabeth Pierce is another professor for which I have an extreme admiration. Dr. Pierce has given me her valuable time to talk about research ideas and life in general. And, Dr. John Talburt, who has not only given me valuable advice about research, but has also provided his time to simply chat whenever I needed it.” Now that Mead has achieved her long-term goal of earning her doctorate, she has accepted a position as a post-doctoral researcher at COSMOS and will continue research regarding numerous aspects of social media data analysis and online behavioral studies, mentor new student researchers, and hopes to become a professor again in the future. “I am extremely proud of Esther,” Agarwal said. “She is everything a professor could ask for in a graduate student – intelligent, motivated, dedicated, communicator, leader, team player, and educator. She will inspire a generation of students to learn, achieve, and aspire.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock researchers investigate information campaigns designed to influence 2019 Canadian election

John Hill — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 17:38:05 +0000

A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have published an article that examined the possible use of online media campaigns orchestrated to influence the 2019 Canadian federal election. The article, “The Role of YouTube during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election: A Multi-Method Analysis of Online Discourse and Information Actors,” was published in the Journal of Future Conflict in September. “We 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,” said lead author Katrin Galeano, who is earning a Ph.D. in computer and information science at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. The study’s co-authors include Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and fellow ��Vlog��ý 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

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’t only YouTube users who are affected by these information campaigns. “I think it’s important to note that it’s easy to share videos on YouTube to other social media platforms,” Galeano said. “The audience might not start at YouTube, but they are being directed to YouTube from various platforms.” 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. “Numerous information actors used influence campaigns to gain the attention of the American public,” the study said. “Teenagers 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.” 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’s 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. “Since 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,” the study states. “The 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.” 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 “have the properties of a large-scale information maneuver.” The website’s 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. “Canada is a little different than the United States,” Galeano said. “We 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.’ 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. “We do think that something similar is happening with the U.S. election,” Galeano said. “It 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.” 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.

Milanova named NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute University Ambassador

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 13:11:58 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has been selected as a teaching ambassador and has been granted essential resources and tools to teach deep learning skills to students, researchers, and professors in Arkansas.�� Dr. Mariofana Milanova, professor of computer science, has joined NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute (DLI) University Ambassador Program. Ambassadors are a select group of DLI-certified instructors committed to teach free instructor-led workshops at universities, academic conferences, and events exclusively for academic students, staff, and researchers. Deep learning is a branch of artificial intelligence covering a spectrum of machine learning research and industrial innovation that provides more efficient algorithms to deal with large-scale data over a broad range of fields, including neurosciences, computer vision, speech recognition, language processing, human-computer interaction, drug discovery, biomedical informatics, healthcare, robotics, cybersecurity, and games. As an ambassador, Milanova will receive free cloud-based training platform and lecture materials for workshops and events, reimbursement for travel and catering expenses, and early access to new training materials. Ambassadors are required to hold two workshops per year, but Milanova plans to hold at least six trainings or more per year based on demand. Since becoming an ambassador in April, she had already held a training on April 26 and May 14. Milanova thinks the high demand for the workshops is due to the fact that potential employers are looking to hire students who have these skills. “We had 40 participants for each workshop, and there is still a waiting list,” Milanova said. “This is one way students can be prepared for future jobs. Hiring companies constantly ask if students have skills in Python and deep learning. Many companies require these skills from our computer science, information science, and engineering students. Students need to know what industry employers want and how to use those skills with real-world applications.” The experience has also been beneficial to her teaching assistants for workshops, Suzan Anwar, Lamarcus Coleman, Kyle Hooks, and Esther Mead, who are graduate students in the Department of Computer Science. “The benefits are tremendous because the students can learn the advanced techniques in deep learning,” Milanova said. “I would like to say thanks to all my TAs for their wonderful support. They are all applying to become university ambassadors as well.” Anyone who completes the workshop will earn a certificate in deep learning from NVIDIA.

Team COSMOS wins Best Paper Award at conference

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:19:44 +0000

A group of University of Arkansas at Little Rock students has won the Best Paper Award from the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA) for their paper studying blogs’ effect on the information flow of Venezuelan migration. Esther Mead, a doctoral student from Sheridan researching information science and information quality, was the lead author for the paper, The paper explored how blogs disseminate information regarding social and political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As a case study, the researchers examined nearly 30,000 blog posts from a Venezuelan community collected between August 2003 to March 2017 to determine if Venezuelan blogs were indeed discussing concerns in the region and possible migration due to these concerns. “This paper establishes the basis for using blog analysis for studying socio-political awareness, presenting the Venezuelan economic crisis as an example,” Mead said. “ Our decision to write this paper was sparked by our motivation to highlight the blogosphere as a legitimate starting point for extracting social media data for discovering trends and valuable insights about populations.” The analysis revealed that the frequency and content of posts change over time, reflecting changes in the socio-political landscape of the region, such as protests, the decline in quality of life factors like food and medicine, and interest in migration from Venezuela, Mead said. �� “This paper sets the stage for future work using Blogtrackers and other natural language processing tools and techniques for blog analysis as a possible approach for anticipating events, like protests, migration, and refugee scenarios,” Mead said. “This information can provide actionable insights to emergency responders, humanitarian assistance organizations, and policy and decision makers.” All of the paper’s co-authors are members of the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Science. �� Co-authors include Agarwal, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, doctoral student from Hyderabad, India, studying computer and information science; Mohammad Shiblee Nooman, master’s student from Dhaka, Bangladesh, majoring in information quality; and Samer Al-khateeb, doctoral student from Baghdad, Iraq, studying computer and information science. The paper was presented at the Seventh International Conference on Social Media Technologies, Communication, and Informatics held Oct. 8-12 in Athens, Greece. This is the third year in a row that a researcher from COSMOS has won the Best Paper Award from an IARIA conference. The research is funded in part by 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 Fund at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Agarwal honored as international IARIA fellow

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:24:46 +0000

Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and information science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was recently honored for a prestigious international fellowship for his achievements in social media and technology research. Agarwal was honored as a fellow of the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA) during the held Oct. 8-12 in Athens, Greece. Every semester, the international organization for their outstanding research, their scientific contributions to the organization’s events, and their continuous leadership roles in conferences. Agarwal, who also is the director of the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), is highly respected for his social media research, and he continues to work with influential national and international organizations such as NATO, U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Lab, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation. His research focuses on studying the role of socio-technical systems, especially social media in conducting cyber campaigns such as Saudi Women’s efforts to raise awareness regarding inequitable and gender-biased laws; Autism support groups’ efforts to debunk misinformation campaigns run by anti-vaccine groups; anti-West, anti-NATO disinformation campaigns run by pro-Russian media and groups; and ISIS’ radicalization and recruitment campaigns. During the conference, Agarwal delivered the conference’s Oct. 11 keynote address, “Fake News, Social Media, and Bots.” “I talked about the various research efforts at COSMOS, primarily our studies on examining mobilization and coordination of information campaigns ranging from awareness of the autism spectrum disorder to women’s rights issues to conducting deviant acts threatening democratic principles and institutions,” Agarwal said. “I spoke in depth about our studies supported by several DoD (Department of Defense) multi-year grants, on examining how social media is used for weaponizing narratives, manipulating discourse through misinformation or disinformation campaigns, recruitment, and radicalization, and the fake news phenomenon.” Agarwal also talked about how social media analysis tools and methodologies he and his team have developed are used by Department of Defense employees, NATO public affairs officers, and strategic communication officers. Most recently, COSMOS began working with George Mason University to establish a Department of Homeland Security-funded Center for Crime Investigation and Network Analysis. The center will study the role of the dark web, dark markets, and crypto currencies by transnational crime organizations to influence thinking, provoke hysteria and chaos, and affect instability. Additionally, Agarwal moderated a panel, “Dealing with Citizen-centric Social News: A Behavioral View.” The panel brought experts from telecommunication, computational science, and information science domains who have tremendous expertise in understanding socio-technical behavior evolution. The panel aimed to present a well-rounded perspective of social media’s role in citizen journalistic efforts in news production, distribution, and consumption. , research project analyst at the Office of Medicaid Inspector General in Little Rock and research associate at COSMOS, also served on the panel. Agarwal also presented a paper co-authored with his doctoral students, Esther Mead, , Samer Al-khateeb, and Mohammad Shiblee Nooman. The paper, “Assessing Situation Awareness through Blogosphere: A Case Study on Venezuelan Socio-Political Crisis and the Migrant Influx,” explored how blogs disseminate information regarding social and political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As a case study, the researchers examined nearly 30,000 blog posts from a Venezuelan community collected between August 2003 to March 2017 to determine if Venezuelan blogs were indeed discussing concerns in the region and possible migration due to these concerns. “Our analysis showed that the blogosphere is indeed being used as a platform for citizens to discuss these issues,” Agarwal said. “Of particular interest is the keyword trend analysis that shows that blogs are being used to discuss issues associated with quality of life and interest in migration away from Venezuela as a result of the crisis. We believe that this study can be used as a starting point to show the value of analyzing blogs in facilitating humanitarian assistance efforts.”

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock