We are thrilled to announce that three new COSMOS studies have been accepted and presented at the 30th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2026) in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) is one of the leading international conferences in information systems and the only Association for Information Systems conference dedicated to the Pacific Asia region. 

Publishing here is a strategic milestone because our current research extensively analyzes digital protest movements in Indonesia, specifically examining the widespread 2025 protests that fragmented across platforms such as X, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Supported by research grants focused on the Indo-Pacific region, presenting our findings in Jakarta places our research directly at the heart of the region we are studying.

Globally, these studies redefine how we track digital collective action across fragmented digital ecosystems. By moving beyond outdated models that focus solely on individual influencers, our new frameworks provide platform governors, policymakers, and global researchers with replicable tools to audit AI-driven recommendation bias, track the spread of narratives, and monitor the behavioral unity of online movements before they peak. 

The first paper, “Narrative Shifts in YouTube Recommendation Networks: A Depth-Based Analysis of the Indonesian Protest,” investigates how YouTube’s AI recommendation algorithms actively reshape user exposure to political events. Using the Contextual Influence–Focal Structure Analysis (CI-FSA) framework, it reveals that as users dive deeper into algorithmic recommendations, protest-heavy content is gradually diluted and replaced by apolitical or government-response narratives. 

The second study, “Toxic Unity: Behavioral Homogenization and the Inverse Toxicity-Cohesion Mechanism in Protests”, applies the Multilayer Behavioral Homogenization Framework (MBHF) to explore a counterintuitive paradox. By examining over 147,000 tweets, the paper discovers that extreme behavioral cohesion during protests is inversely related to collective toxicity, proving that group unity is driven primarily by shared ideological alignment rather than direct social interaction. 

Finally, “Focal Collective Actors as Narrative Structures: Cross-Platform Brokerage in Digital Protest” examines how protest narratives persist across highly fragmented social media platforms such as X, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where users rarely share the same identities. Applying the CI-FSA framework, we show that cross-platform continuity is sustained not by highly visible individual influencers but by structurally embedded “collective brokers” who link different discursive spaces.

Collectively, these publications reinforce COSMOS’s continued mission to explain, measure, and mitigate complex information challenges in today’s digitally connected world.