/news-archive/tag/social-media-analysis/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:48:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2019/07/19/nitin-agarwal-cybersecurity-grant/ Fri, 19 Jul 2019 14:48:25 +0000 /news/?p=74773 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock researcher receives $2.4 million for cybersecurity research]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies () at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop ways to track emerging cyber-social threats and strengthen social cybersecurity research infrastructure.听 The funding will support the development of research infrastructure to assess social media and blogs in real time and respond to the growing weaponization of online discourse in influencing peacekeeping, and tactical, operational, and strategic operations. The research infrastructure will include development of models, software applications, and training programs. Military units at all levels will benefit from the intended goals of the project in identification of threats and opportunities within the information environment. 鈥淲e appreciate the support from Sen. John Boozman for the social networking research at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock,鈥� Agarwal said of the three-year grant. 鈥淭he senator recognizes the importance of developing new approaches, software tools, and training programs for national security in cyberspace, and this grant was enabled through his support of funding for the Navy鈥檚 Social Networks Analysis program.鈥� Boozman serves as chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies and has a seat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. 鈥溙切腣log传媒 Little Rock continues to be an outstanding partner in the Navy鈥檚 efforts to track and counter our adversaries鈥� use of social media to bring harm to American interests at home and overseas,鈥� Boozman said. 鈥淭his award will expand capabilities at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and create opportunities for students to develop new skills and expertise in this important area of information science.鈥� Agarwal鈥檚 proposed research infrastructure will enable rapid and appropriate response that can neutralize propaganda and mitigate its negative effects. Social media platforms that are manipulated by adversarial campaigns can shift international and regional opinions about the use of military force or validity of military operations in a region. At the tactical level, social media propaganda could potentially be used to persuade susceptible targets to disrupt or delay military operations through protests or other 鈥渘on-lethal鈥� resistance. 鈥淭he aim of this project is to examine, evaluate, measure, and predict the threat level of the adversarial information campaigns,鈥� Agarwal said. Agarwal and his team will develop a multi-model approach to analyze adversarial information campaigns conducted online. Their research will identify key actors, groups, narratives, media integration strategies, and tactics deployed by those who disseminate disinformation and conduct influence operations.听 The research approach will adopt a blend of computational modeling, big social data, and social science theoretical principles to examine cyber campaigns and assess the threats they pose. More specifically, the effort will bridge big data and social computing research communities to advance big data research infrastructure and security for the modern social and communication space.听 COSMOS will develop research-informed solutions to surmount challenges in curating and analyzing social media data characterized by its volume, velocity, and variety. Training exercises will be conducted that will help enhance the U.S. workforce with skills in the challenging and changing domain of big data analytics, data management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with applications in security. 鈥淲e hope to spark innovation and entrepreneurial aspirations in big data and its applications aligning with the knowledge-based economic development mission of the state of Arkansas,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淭his will not only help develop talent within Arkansas but also retain and acquire new talent.鈥� About the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) At COSMOS, researchers study various aspects of social media and online behavior under the direction of Dr. Nitin Agarwal, who is directing several projects with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Research at COSMOS has contributed to computational social network analysis and advanced the studies in social cyber security, cyber campaign coordination, identifying powerful actors and groups, disinformation dissemination across social media, cyber threat monitoring, social-cyber forensics, health informatics, data mining, and privacy. COSMOS has developed publicly available social media mining tools, Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker, used during NATO鈥檚 military exercises. COSMOS participates in the national Tech Innovation Hub launched by the U.S. Department of State鈥檚 Global Engagement Center to defeat foreign-based propaganda. For more information, visit .]]> /news-archive/2019/01/30/cosmos-tech-demonstration-series/ Wed, 30 Jan 2019 15:03:49 +0000 /news/?p=73237 ... U.S. State Department officials view how technology can help government agencies battle foreign propaganda]]> Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock demonstrated to visiting government officials how web-based, social-media tracking technology programs can help government agencies identify and analyze foreign propaganda and disinformation. , Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, and his research team at the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies (), are one of 14 groups nationwide participating in the U.S. State Department鈥檚 tech demo program to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation threats from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. hosted members of the Department of State Nov. 28 as part of the Other members of the delegation who joined via video conference included representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, United States Central Command, and other agencies. Members of the Technology Demonstration Series are touring the country to view technologies that can help achieve its mission to 鈥渓ead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the federal government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.鈥� The work of the GEC is focused around four core areas: science and technology, interagency engagement, partner engagement, and content production. During the visit, COSMOS researchers showcased technologies like Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker, two of COSMOS鈥� latest applications that help monitor conversations and discourse on social media platforms. These applications further help in tracking information actors and narratives as disinformation is disseminated through social networks including blogs, YouTube, and Twitter. YouTubeTracker demonstrates expansion in COSMOS鈥� research goals from understanding how people consume media via reading to including viewing-oriented information consumption. 鈥淭he younger generations consume information more by viewing than reading, so they are becoming susceptible to disinformation that is prevalent on video-based social media platforms,鈥� Agarwal said. Blogtrackers and YouTube trackers use algorithms that can quickly sift through massive amounts of social media data, but also target the right signals toward users who are trying to manipulate the data. Algorithmic warfare is becoming an increasingly hot topic as companies like Google, Twitter, and YouTube have realized that the algorithms they use to search and recommend content to their users are susceptible to manipulation by outside forces, Agarwal said. As an example, hackers could target Google鈥檚 search algorithms to make a website with false information appear higher in search results, therefore making the website look legitimate. In the upper right photo, members of COSMOS and the Department of State discuss how COSMOS鈥� technology can assist in the identification and analysis of propaganda and disinformation.]]> /news-archive/2018/08/22/research-tracking-disinformation-campaigns-social-media/ Wed, 22 Aug 2018 15:14:34 +0000 /news/?p=71418 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock paper wins award at international conference for research on tracking disinformation campaigns through social media]]> A 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock research paper on strategic integrations of social media platforms received the Challenge Problem Runner Up award at the 2018 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation this summer.听 The research project, 鈥淓xamining Strategic Integrations of Social Media Platforms in Tracking Disinformation Campaign Coordination,鈥� explores the role of media orchestration strategies in conducting disinformation campaigns. It was presented July 11-13 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 听 , a fifth-year doctoral student in information science, is the lead author for the paper. He is also a core researcher at (Collaboratorium for听Social Media and Behavioral Studies), a research group led by, Jerry L.听Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair of Information Science. The paper鈥檚 co-authors include Kiran Kumar Bandeli, a third-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at COSMOS,, former postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS who is now an assistant professor of computer science at Creighton University, Dr., a research project analyst at the office of Medicaid Inspector General and a postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, and Agarwal. The research presents an in-depth examination of the information networks using social network analysis and cyber forensic based methodology to identify prominent information actors and leading coordinators of the disinformation campaigns. 听 鈥淢ost researchers focus on one platform to study disinformation, but dissemination strategies have evolved,鈥� Hussain said. 鈥淢ultiple social media platforms are used in coordination to maximize disinformation diffusion. This paper is a step towards identifying these complex strategies. We plan to continue to monitor and identify disinformation dissemination strategies as they evolve.鈥� Using the developed research methodology, the study reveals a massive disinformation coordination campaign pertaining to the Baltic region conducted primarily on blogs, but strategically linking to a variety of other social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and VKontakte. 鈥淐urrently, the United States and our global partners are in the infancy of where participatory media, technology, and policy meet 鈥� a lawless Wild West of social media,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淭his calls for rigorous studies on sociotechnical behavioral modeling, content generation and regulation in social media, cyber-threat assessment, social cyber security, cyber-diplomacy, cyber-human systems, and social computing technologies in general, to develop methodologies to diagnose novel pathologies of online social media This research is a step towards that direction.鈥� The researchers note that at a time when people rely on social media to consume news more than the mainstream media, irresponsible citizen journalism poses a threat to democratic principles and institutions by misrepresenting facts and information. Using,, and tools, the team听demonstrated unique ways of tracking disinformation campaigns that leverage a听mix of various social media platforms to coordinate the campaigns. This research is funded in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Researchers are grateful to the support. In the upper right photo,听Muhammad Nihal Hussain, a fifth-year doctoral student in information science, presents the paper at the 2018 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation this summer.]]> /news-archive/2018/03/09/blogtrackers-cosmos/ Fri, 09 Mar 2018 14:54:46 +0000 /news/?p=69729 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock student researcher is uncovering the secrets of the blogosphere]]> In February, more than 409 million people read the over 20.8 billion pages posted on , a popular blogging platform. Blogging remains a popular form of online communication that is growing at an exponential rate, yet few researchers have grasped the potential of data mining the blogosphere for research purposes.听 The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is among the very few universities in the country with a team and projects dedicated to researching blogs. One of the researchers heading this project is , a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a core researcher at COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair of Information Science. In 2009, Agarwal developed a program called Blogtrackers, a tool designed to track and analyze blogs and gain insights from the blogosphere. Through Blogtrackers, COSMOS has been actively working on research studies that are supported by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research in the fight against cyber propaganda campaigns and听tracked how anti-NATO groups reacted to information released during NATO鈥檚 exercises. Agarwal and Hussain also have trained NATO personnel to use Blogtrackers to analyze how false information and fake news stories are spread through social media. 鈥淭here are not many universities who are analyzing blogs,鈥� Hussain said. 鈥淢ost just analyze Twitter, but they are missing out on a great social media platform. Almost all fake news is posted on blogs first and then linked to on Twitter. You cannot influence a person in 280 characters, but you can influence people through blog posts.鈥� Hussain, a native of Hyderabad, India, graduated from Osmania University with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in information technology. While working as a systems engineer at Infosys, Hussain learned from a friend about research opportunities and graduate school options available at the College of Engineering and Information Technology at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. 听 鈥淚 had joined 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in 2014 to pursue my master鈥檚 degree in information quality with no intention to pursue a Ph.D., but the opportunity to work with Dr. Agarwal in COSMOS and developing the blog tracking tool led me to pursue my PhD. here,鈥� he said. is currently in a beta stage and can only be accessed by researchers and others who have been trained to use it. However, Hussain is working to make Blogtrackers available for public use. 鈥淚 want to set up an automated crawler in Blogtrackers so it can collect data on its own without much human intervention,鈥� he said. 鈥淥nce the pipeline is set up to collect data, it would allow people to set up their own data set of blogs and to analyze blogs for their own purposes.鈥� In addition to researchers, Blogtrackers could be of great use to businesses, teachers, social scientists, journalists, public affairs personnel, and the military, Hussain noted. With Hussain set to graduate in December, he is pursuing opportunities to work in academia or for a research company. However, he would love to stay at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock to continue researching and developing Blogtrackers for public use in the near future. 鈥淚 thank 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock for introducing me to Dr. Agarwal,鈥� he said. 鈥溙切腣log传媒 Little Rock plays a big role in supporting these great research projects on campus. We are one of the very few universities in the country who are researching blogs. This cutting edge research will snowball into bigger things for the university and provide many research opportunities for students.鈥� The Blogtrackers research project is supported in part by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.]]> /news-archive/2017/10/02/agarwal-receives-230000-assist-u-s-department-defense-social-bot-detection/ Mon, 02 Oct 2017 13:31:12 +0000 /news/?p=68097 ... Agarwal receives $230,000 to assist U.S. Department of Defense in social bot detection]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair of Information Science, received the grant to develop a socio-computational model for the (DARPA) to detect the online presence of social bots. These bots automatically generate messages that persuade social media users on particular issues, ideas, and campaigns. Agarwal is working with, a company based in Rockville, Maryland, that specializes in research and development for federal agencies and corporations in the United States. Agarwal will work on multiple tasks to better understand how social bots have affected public discourse at a social and computational level. These tasks include identifying specific cases in which these bots have affected information and data collection, examining the computational framework of bots, discovering what a bot can and cannot do in a social media space, and developing behavior models to identify strategies in which bots are used. “It is vital to study these rapidly evolving cyber warfare tactics to understand influence operations conducted on social media that distort public discourse, weaponize narratives, and fabricate perceptions,” Agarwal said. “In this project, we will develop and perfect methodologies informed by social science and computational social network analysis to study the information dissemination and coordination behaviors of social bots and to aid the development of detection tools ready for deployment in cyber operations.” In the next phase of the project, Agarwal will explore the content that social bots create, map their behavior, and explore their effectiveness in information campaigns.]]> /news-archive/2017/09/27/samer-alkhateeb/ Wed, 27 Sep 2017 13:04:03 +0000 /news/?p=68035 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock doctoral student presents research on social cyber forensics]]> Samer Al-Khateeb, computer and information sciences doctoral student, has been working as a research and teaching assistant with Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, since 2013 as part of Agarwal鈥檚 research group, 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock (COSMOS). 鈥淪amer started working with me in 2013 on U.S. Department of Defense funded projects to investigate how violent, extremist groups, terrorist organizations, state and non-state actors use social media technologies to manipulate public discourse, weaponize narratives, disseminate propaganda, and recruit and radicalize,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淗is work on these projects is extremely critical and timely. His research cuts across the disciplinary silos and pushes the fringes of our understanding of emergent behaviors, decentralized and unorganized organizations.鈥� On Sept. 1, Al-Khateeb presented a paper, 鈥淲hen Citizen Journalism Goes Rogue,鈥� about bad citizen journalism cases at the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies 5th International Conference in New York City. 鈥淭his presentation is about the rise of citizen journalism in the social media era,鈥� Al-Khateeb said. 鈥淭here are many cases where people report events before the traditional media. In many cases, this is a good thing. However, people can also report fake news and spread misinformation. If that news is fake, it can be bad for society. We presented case studies were citizen journalism went rogue.鈥� In July, Al-Khateeb presented his research entitled, “A Social-Cyber Forensics Approach to Understand Twitter & Blogs’ Influence on Anti-NATO Propaganda Campaigns,” during the Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction Conference held July 5-8 in Washington, D.C. The presentation explored how an online deviant group used different social media channels and techniques to spread propaganda and misinformation against the Trident Juncture Exercise conducted by NATO forces in Europe in 2015. Al-Khateeb used social network measures and social cyber forensics to identify influential information actors and uncover hidden relations between anti-NATO operatives. 鈥淭hese groups use Twitter to build an audience (followers), then they steer their followers to blogs where they frame their narratives,鈥� Al-Khateeb said. 鈥淚n this work, we tried to find the relationships between the online deviant groups on Twitter and their blogs and websites. We did this by running social network analysis and social cyber forensics techniques, which also helped us finding other people who are working with these groups to disseminate propaganda.鈥� The information can help authorities and decision makers see how online groups are coordinating the spread of information and come up with countermeasures and counter narratives to combat these groups. Al-Khateeb and fellow doctoral student Muhammad Nihal Hussain also led a three-hour tutorial for conference presenters on social cyber forensics. At another conference in Washington, D.C., Al-Khateeb presented his paper, “Leveraging Social Network Analysis & Social Cyber Forensics Approaches to Study Cyber Propaganda Campaigns” at the first North American Social Networks Conference of the International Network For Social Network Analysis held July 26-30. Agarwal and Hussain co-authored the paper. Al-Khateeb, who also holds a bachelor鈥檚 degree in computer science and a master鈥檚 degree in applied science from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, is expected to graduate with his Ph.D. at the end of the semester and has plans to work at a university as a professor and researcher. He has signed a contract with Springer to write a book on social cyber forensics. His research areas include social network analysis, deviant behavioral modeling, deviant cyber flash mobs, cyber propaganda campaigns, social cyber forensics, social computing, data mining in social media, and the detection of bots. He most recently won awards at the 2017 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Engineering and Information Technology Open House, including the Excellence in Research Award, second place in the Most Innovative Award, and second place in the Societal Impact Award.]]> /news-archive/2017/03/17/nato-training-course-social-media-analysis/ Fri, 17 Mar 2017 18:31:49 +0000 /news/?p=66636 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock professor and student to lead NATO training course on social media analysis]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy chair and professor of information science at 糖心Vlog传媒 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. 鈥�The social media analysis course will help end-users to better understand the online information environment,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥�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.鈥� Agarwal, who also is the director of the 糖心Vlog传媒 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 鈥� Hussain and Samer Al-Khateeb 听鈥� studied and tracked social media responses to NATO exercises during summer 2016, including anti-NATO narratives from pro-Russian outlets. 听 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鈥檚 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/糖心Vlog传媒LR Communications.]]>