COSMOS began studying election-related social media content in 2019. To examine the possible use of a hostile online media campaign orchestrated to influence the 2019 Canadian Federal election, researchers used an in-house application called YouTubeTracker to collect more than 6,000 videos and more than one million comments. They combined multiple social media analysis techniques, social cyber forensic methods, content analysis, and mathematical-sociological constructs to determine whether online influence campaigns were orchestrated on YouTube.  “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 spreadRead More →

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. Nitin Agarwal traveled to Greece, where he demonstrated YouTubeTracker, a socio-computational tool developed by COSMOS, at the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI). The annual international conference focuses on research that deepens the understanding of computational, logical, cognitive, physical as well as business and social foundations of the future Web, and enables the development and application of intelligent technologies. YouTubeTracker’s ability to assist its users in the understanding of information operations was a popular demo at the conference. The tool aims to provide in-depth qualitative and quantitative insights into user behavior or networks. YouTubeTracker gathers YouTube data and offers insights on content andRead More →

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 →

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 →

The 11th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS 2018) took place in Washington DC this past week.   The four-day multidisciplinary conference with a selective single paper track and poster session attracted participants from across the globe. A full list of the papers, posters, demos, and other publications is available from the conference website. Conference co-chairs Dr. Kathleen M. Carley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Nitin Agarwal, director of Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, welcomed students, research scientists, and members from funding agencies. COSMOSRead More →