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

��Vlog��ý Little Rock research produces quantitative portrait of legislative change in Ukraine

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 12:33:47 +0000

Two University of Arkansas at Little Rock researchers have used a novel approach to quantitatively portray legislative change in Ukraine to provide a view into the larger political dynamics of the country. Zachary Stine, a Ph.D. student in computer and information sciences, and his mentor, Dr. Nitin Agarwal, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and professor of information science, used topic modeling to produce a quantitative picture of legislative change in Ukraine over 12 years. “This research gives us a quantitative picture that fits what we believe to be a true representation of Ukrainian politics in real time,” Stine said. “If you are a political scientist, you probably aren’t going to read 17,000 draft laws to understand the political situation. This research gives you a window into the political landscape.” The goal of the research is to quantitatively characterize a political system as an ongoing, unfolding process. The research can be used to explore ideological pathways through a political space, contextualize the voting behaviors of politicians, and trace the evolution of a political system. “We selected Ukraine as a case study because of the U.S.’s strategic and geopolitical interests in Ukraine as it is a vital NATO member, its proximity to Russia, Russia’s meddling in Ukraine’s political system, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russia’s aggression in eastern Ukraine, and increasing socio-politico-cultural influence of Russia in Ukraine,” Agarwal said. Stine and Agarwal computationally analyzed all draft legislation, more than 17,000 draft laws, produced by the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, between 2006 and 2018. Many politically important events occurred during this time period in Ukraine, including the 2014 ousting of Viktor Yanukovych as president. The time period encompasses the fifth, sixth, seventh, and the majority of the eight convocations, which represent the tenure of a newly elected parliament. “The parliament of Ukraine consists of an ever-changing array of political factions in which membership is fluid,” Stine said. “They aren’t like the U.S. where we have two main political parties. In Ukraine, people may become a politician as part of one political party, but they vote with other parties. This creates some interesting political dynamics.”

Dr. Nitin Agarwal

The researchers used the topic modeling algorithm, latent Dirichlet allocation, to identify word-usage patterns and represent Ukrainian draft laws as a distribution of topics. “As the textual artifacts of a complex political process, Ukrainian draft laws encode the paths explored through a political space on the part of the Verkhova Rada,” Agarwal said. “By condensing each draft law into a distribution of inferred topics, we can measure how surprising a given law is relative to some number of preceding laws using the notion of novelty.” One of the study’s findings was that Ukraine’s greatest legislative changes largely deal with how the country manages relationships with foreign countries. Stine and Agarwal found that the Committee of European Integration and the Committee of Foreign Affairs produce draft bills with the highest novelty value on average. “This is notable in light of the 2013 protests which would lead up to the 2014 revolution and eventual ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych,” Stine said. “These protests were initially motivated by the decisions to break association talks with the European Union, widely seen as a capitulation to Russian interests. The high average novelty of these committees suggests that they have been drivers of legislative innovation and change across these convocations.” Stine presented this study at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s 2019 Research and Creative Works Expo, where he received third place in the computer and information science graduate category. They also presented the research at the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Culturing Modeling, and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation in July. In future research, Stine and Agarwal plan to analyze additional information from legislation approved by Ukraine’s parliament, such as voting records, bill sponsorship, supporting legislative committees, etc. It is hoped that the research one day might be able to identify connections between politicians and political allies and predict how politicians are likely to vote as well as when major political shifts are about to occur. This research is funded in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (N00014-17-1-2675) and the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowment at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock.

General Wesley Clark to speak at Bowen law school

Janea Snyder — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 23:12:27 +0000

Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.), the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from Little Rock, will visit the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s William H. Bowen School of Law on Monday, Feb. 25, to speak about the importance of NATO to national security. Clark’s talk will take place from 5:15-6:30 p.m. in the Friday Courtroom at the law school. The doors will open at 4:45 p.m. Dean Theresa Beiner will introduce Clark, and a short question-and-answer will follow Clark’s talk. Clark’s talk is hosted by the Bowen Chapter of The American Constitution Society. Clark graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy and completed degrees in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. He retired as a four-star general after 38 years in the U.S. Army, having served in his last assignments as commander of U.S. Southern Command and then as commander of U.S. European Command/Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. In his final assignment as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, a 78-day air campaign, backed by ground invasion planning and a diplomatic process, that saved 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing. Clark has received numerous U.S. and foreign military awards, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart. In 2000, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. He currently serves as chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic consulting firm. He has four books and is a frequent contributor on TV and to newspapers. For more information, contact Tina Medlock at 501-324-9973. Photo by E. M. Pio Roda / TCM

Naval Research office awards Nitin Agarwal $1.5 million grant

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 14:38:21 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has received more than $1.5 million to research ways to aid U.S. military forces in the fight against cyber propaganda campaigns. The Office of Naval Research awarded Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, a $1,530,778 grant. This new grant enables Agarwal to continue his investigation into the practices, tactics, and motivations of organizers of web-based mass movements and their participants. In his research, Agarwal will use cyber forensics and deep web search-based methodologies to study the sources of false information on the Internet, how it is spread through social media, and how people and groups strategically use this false information to conduct cyber propaganda campaigns. Combined with research from previous studies, Agarwal will develop models that can identify key individuals and groups responsible for conducting cyber campaigns and spreading propaganda. “The developed models will help assess the state of the discontent and unrest among the people and design risk-averse strategies to enhance human security for NATO forces, U.S. forces, citizens, and international aid workers,” Agarwal said. Understanding how social media is used to advocate a specific agenda is critical to understanding how information is spread in unstable environments like warzones, Agarwal said. “Currently, we are in the infancy of where participatory media and technology merge – a lawless Wild West of social media,” he said. “Therefore, it is important to examine strategic and tactical information maneuvers in social media to fundamentally understand cyber propaganda campaigns.” Social media channels have become modern-day “virtual town halls” where participants share information that shapes political discourse. While social media networks have endowed citizens with the power to freely express their opinions, they have also become a powerful tool to disseminate weaponized narratives. “At a time when people like to get their news from social media rather than mainstream media, irresponsible citizen journalism poses a threat to democratic principles and institutions by misrepresenting facts and information,” Agarwal said. Discussions on social media channels can often spill over to mainstream media, which helps legitimize false information. “Several journalistic accounts have shown that social media and the deep web channels are strategically used to distribute misinformation, fake news, or coordinate cyber propaganda campaigns,” Agarwal said. YouTube, for example, is often used to target teenagers and young people, subjecting them to conspiracy theories, disinformation campaigns, and radical ideologies. The effects of these cyber campaigns have been seen all over the world, with major transnational crime organizations utilizing social media to recruit, influence, and encourage action. Their tactics are complex and diverse, ranging from publishing fake pictures to hiring armies of “trolls” to spread propaganda on blogs and social media. Agarwal’s research, “Developing Novel Socio-Computational Methodologies to Analyze Multimedia-based Cyber Propaganda Campaigns,” begins this month and will wrap up in January 2019. This project is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency.

Agarwal addresses NATO meeting on dangers of information disseminated by botnets

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 04 May 2017 13:43:22 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor advised members of NATO about the danger of false information distributed online through botnets, a network of computer programs that act autonomously on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy chair and professor of information science, spoke to a joint meeting between the NATO information operations (INFO-OPS) and psychological operations (PSYOPS) working group April 26 in San Antonio, Texas. His keynote speech, identified how “deviant” groups use botnets to disseminate misinformation and propaganda through social media during critical events like the 2014 Crimean Water Crisis, , and . Data gathered from blogs and Twitter posts during the events indicate botnet use is becoming more sophisticated and difficult to detect even with state-of-the-art techniques. “My talk emphasized the critical need to understand the modern information environment and the hybrid information warfare that is being conducted,” Agarwal said. “Our message is that we need to expand our security focus from traditional definitions, such as hacking, malware, spam, etc., to include insidious ways of manipulating civic discourse and influencing people.” Many conference attendees, including national delegates of NATO member countries, approached Agarwal after his address to learn how their public affairs, information operations, and psychological operations officers could be trained in the social media analysis techniques used in Agarwal’s ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center of Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), Agarwal said. Defense Strategic Communications, NATO’s flagship journal, published his research in March 2017. Samer Al-khateeb, Major Rick Galeano, and Dr. Rebecca Goolsby co-authored the article with Agarwal.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock professor and student to lead NATO training course on social media analysis

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 18:31:49 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor who has made a name for himself tracking the spread of terrorist organization messages through social media will soon teach those skills at a NATO training course in Latvia. 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.

��Vlog��ýLR researchers present findings at NATO conference

Ajani Oyindamola — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:54:19 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and two doctoral students recently got a chance to unveil their research on cyber defense at an international NATO conference. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the ��Vlog��ýLR Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, and his doctoral students, Samer Al-Khateeb and Nihal Hussain, presented their research at the NATO Technology for Information, Decision, and Execution (TIDE) Sprint Conference Oct. 26 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The conference serves as an initiative to achieve and maintain technology, information, and decision making in support of NATO’s command and control development efforts. The talk, “Understanding Influence Operations of Novorossiya through Blogs and Twitter,” detailed the research team’s monitoring of social media responses to NATO exercises Operation Brilliant Jump and Anakonda over the summer. Specifically, they tracked how anti-NATO groups reacted to information released by NATO and media coverage of the exercises via social media. “We documented and described various case studies pertaining to the Novorossiya context, especially the anti-NATO narrative propagated by the pro-Russian media outlets,” Agarwal said. It’s important to monitor misinformation spread through social media, since deviant groups can coordinate cyber campaigns to influence thinking and media coverage of events, Agarwal said. “In today’s information technology age, our thinking and behaviors are highly influenced by what we see on our smartphone screens,” Agarwal said. “Misinformation is rampant. Complemented with the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools, such as social media, conducting deviant acts becomes both convenient and effective.” The researchers used social network analysis and cyber forensics to develop tools and methodologies to find hidden relations between different groups and track deviant groups across social media websites, Al-Khateeb said. For instance, their research can identify the influential people in a social network who are most responsible for spreading false information in a cyber campaign. They can also track how this information is spread from one social network to another. For example, narratives can be framed on blogs and YouTube videos and then that information can be disseminated through Twitter and Reddit. “Blogs provide a rich medium for presenting a story with half-truths and misinformation, which are then disseminated using Twitter or Facebook. Identifying these cross-media affiliations is important to build a complete picture,” Hussain said. The work is funded in part by a $186,692 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, titled “Analyzing Integrated Social Media-Facilitated Propaganda Campaigns Using Social Network Analysis and Cyber Forensics,” and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Army Research Office, titled “Towards Predictive Modeling Deviant Cyber Flash Mobs: A Socio-Informatics Driven Hypergraph Framework.” The grant builds on Agarwal’s already significant body of social media research and behavioral modeling. It is part of a larger research program in his Center Of Social Media and Online behavioral Studies (COSMOS) lab. More information on these projects can be found on Agarwal’s project website. More information about the researchers: Agarwal is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Chair Professor of Information Science at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is the director of Center of Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies. His research interests include social computing, data mining, privacy, social-cyber security, and health informatics. He has published widely in top-tier forums with several best paper awards. His research is supported by grants from the U.S. NSF, ONR, AFRL, and ARO. Agarwal obtained his Ph.D. from Arizona State University with outstanding dissertation recognition in 2009. He was awarded Top 20 in 20s by Arkansas Business Magazine in 2012. ��Vlog��ýLR awarded Agarwal the 2015 Faculty Excellence Award for Research and Creative Endeavors. Al-Khateeb is pursuing his doctorate in computer and information sciences. His research includes deviant behavioral modeling, deviant cyber flash mobs, cyber propaganda campaigns, social cyber forensics, social computing, data mining in social media, and collective action. He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in applied science from ��Vlog��ýLR and is a recipient of the outstanding master’s student award from the College of Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Hussain is pursuing his doctorate in integrated computing at ��Vlog��ýLR. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Osmania University. He also works as a research assistant in the information science department, and his research interests include text mining and unstructured data mining. In the upper right photo, Dr. Nitin Agarwal (left) and his doctoral students, Nihal Hussain and Samer Al-Khateeb, presented their research at the NATO Technology for Information, Decision, and Execution (TIDE) Sprint Conference Oct. 26 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ýLR Communications.

��Vlog��ýLR professor monitors anti-NATO narratives for Operation Brilliant Jump

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:44:07 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and his team of student researchers are investigating how groups are using social media to respond to NATO exercises. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the ��Vlog��ýLR Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, monitored social media responses to, a 2,500-person NATO exercise that focused on the logistics of moving troops and heavy equipment from Spain to Poland within four days. “During the exercise, our role was to examine the social media information environment and identify what type of narratives are being disseminated,” Agarwal said. “More specifically, how are anti-NATO groups reacting to the exercise and the media coverage that NATO public affairs is putting out?” Brilliant Jump, which ran May 17-27, was the third in a series of four NATO exercises taking place in Poland. The aim of the exercise was to train the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force to deploy quickly to an assigned area of operations following the activation of the NATO Response Force. Agarwal’s student research team members include Shiblee Nooman and Abu Fahad Siddiqui, who are earning master’s degrees in information quality, as well as Samer Al-khateeb and Muhammad Nihal Hussain, who are earning doctorates in information science. A fifth team member, Mainuddin Shaik, recently graduated with a master’s degree in information quality and will be working at HP in El Paso, Texas. Agarwal’s team worked in collaboration with other university teams, including Carnegie Mellon and Arizona State, to monitor the social media responses of information disseminated by the NATO public affairs office and by news organizations. The ��Vlog��ýLR team analyzed blogs via, a blog analysis tool Agarwal created. Specifically, Agarwal and his team searched for cyber propaganda campaigns conducted by anti-NATO groups. Cyber propaganda campaigns are deceptive online movements that manifest in physical behaviors and events. These groups use social media to recruit followers, spread propaganda, and encourage action. During Brilliant Jump, anti-NATO bloggers used NATO-disseminated images, videos, and information to spread a narrative that NATO was using the training exercise to prepare for war against Russia. “The idea is to influence the thinking of people into misleading them into thinking that there is an act of aggression against Russia,” Agarwal said. “Misinformation is rampant. It’s everywhere on social media. As information scientists, we should be able to provide ways to measure how truthful or how correct this information is and be able to guide the reader and make them aware of these challenges.” To help combat the growing threat of cyber campaigns, Agarwal and his graduate students are using social network analysis, cyber forensics, and deep web searches to study cyber campaigns to develop models for detecting and predicting the online behaviors of deviant groups. “I have found a lot of conventional propaganda techniques being used in modern spaces like Twitter and Instagram,” Hussain said. “This is a type of social engineering being used to coerce people into believing certain things. I am trying to understand and develop models to identify strategies of propaganda in social media and to help people develop counternarratives and countermeasures to defeat a certain narrative or to eliminate propaganda narratives.” Their research will determine the universal characteristics of cyber campaigns, develop models to identify propaganda strategies used in social media, and help develop countermeasures that can be used to defeat propaganda narratives, Hussain said. “The next phase of battle will be in cyberspace,” Al-khateeb said. “I think the next type of war will be more of a cyber war than a physical war, where you can influence people’s thinking in an easier way using social media.” In addition to Brilliant Jump, Agarwal and his team are also monitoring the social media output regarding. Taking place from June 7-17, this operation is a Polish national exercise that seeks to train, exercise, and integrate Polish national command and force structures into an allied, joint, multinational environment. The work is funded in part by a $186,692 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, titled “Analyzing Integrated Social Media-Facilitated Propaganda Campaigns Using Social Network Analysis and Cyber Forensics,” and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Army Research Office, titled “Towards Predictive Modeling Deviant Cyber Flash Mobs: A Socio-Informatics Driven Hypergraph Framework.” The grant builds on Agarwal’s already significant body of social media research and behavioral modeling. It is part of a larger research program in his Center Of Social Media and Online behavioral Studies (COSMOS) lab. More details on these projects can be found on Agarwal’s project website. In the upper right photo, Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s student research team has been studying the social media output regarding NATO Operation Brilliant Jump. Shown, from left to right, are Samer Al-khateeb, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, Mainuddin Shaik, Mohammad Nooman Shiblee, Nitin Agarwal, and Abu Fahad Siddiqui. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ýLR Communications.

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

����Vlog��ý Little Rock research produces quantitative portrait of legislative change in Ukraine