Blogtrackers

COSMOS Research and Tools Showcased at Centre of Excellence for National Security in Singapore

COSMOS director Dr. Nitin Agarwal participated in the two-day workshop “Understanding and Countering Online Falsehoods and Influence Operations” organized by the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a research unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. CENS brought together experts from academia, industry and governments from across the globe to share their insights and experiences. The goal was to gain a better understanding of the issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, how organizations and countries deal with these issues and how problems can be countered by using existing and new means. As an expert from academia,Read More →

Dr. Agarwal speaks about deviant online behavior at UA Little Rock Downtown Lecture Series

COSMOS director and Arkansas Research Alliance fellow Dr. Nitin Agarwal spoke about deviant online behavior at UA Little Rock Downtown on Wednesday, March 13. This behavior includes, but is not limited to, deviant mobs of the Internet, disinformation campaigns, bots, trolls and computational propaganda techniques. Dr. Agarwal presented examples of how the spread of misinformation online affects the real world from fueling hatred that leads to violence to spreading incorrect medical information that will result in health risks. The spread of “fake news” can also influence voters, create confusion during disasters and cause hysteria of the masses. Deviant online behavior spreads over many platforms.Read More →

COSMOS showcases technological solutions during Department of State delegation visit at UA Little Rock

COSMOS hosted members of the Department of State on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, as part of the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) Technology Demonstration Series. During the visit, team members demonstrated the functionality of Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker, two web-based technologies that are able to assist the GEC identify and analyze foreign propaganda and disinformation. Dr. Agarwal’s team of researchers is one of 14 groups throughout the country that is participating in the program, which is organized by the Global Engagement Center that is charged with leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. COSMOS researchers showcased technologiesRead More →

COSMOS presents new emerging technologies at annual NATO conference in Rome

As almost 400 attendees gathered at the 2018 NATO Information Communicators’ Conference (NICC) in Rome this September, Ph.D. fellow Katrin Galeano represented COSMOS to showcase the emerging technologies Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker. The annual conference invited communication professionals from within NATO as well as academia and industry to discuss tools and strategies for Information Environment Assessment (IEA), the theme of this year’s conference. Mrs. Galeano was invited to the NICC to demonstrate technologies developed by COSMOS during the workshop sessions held on Thursday, September September 20. As one of only 51 presenters from NATO, industry and academia from all NATO member states, she presented COSMOS’Read More →

COSMOS joins program to fight the spread of foreign propaganda

University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and social media infiltration expert Dr. Nitin Agarwal has been selected as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Tech Demo program to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, leads COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) at UA Little Rock. Agarwal’s team of researchers is one of 14 groups throughout the country that is participating in the program, which is organized by the Global Engagement Center that is charged with leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. During the next six months,Read More →

Research explores how online narratives on refugees shift over time.

A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock are studying how the mass migration of refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries into Europe has created a shift in the migrant narrative in online communication. The paper, “Analyzing Shift in Narratives Regarding Migrants in Europe via Blogosphere,” has been accepted in the Text2Story18 workshop at the 40th annual European Conference on Information Retrieval, a premier conference in information retrieval, to be held March 26-29 in Grenoble, France. The lead author of the paper, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at COSMOS (Collaboratorium forRead More →

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