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.


Nihal Hussain provided a hands-on demonstration of BlogTrackers during the poster session.

COSMOS was represented by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Dr. Samer Al-Khateeb, Dr. Serpil Tokdemir as well as Ph.D. students Nihal Hussain, Tuja Khaund, Rick Galeano, and Katrin Galeano.  The team began their active participation on Tuesday by presenting their tutorial, entitled “Analyzing Multimedia-based Disinformation Campaigns Conducted on Multiple Social Media Platforms.”  Al-Khateeb introduced the subject matter to the audience, followed by Hussain who discussed blog tracking and YouTube tracking via COSMOS’ Blogtrackers and YouTubeTracker tools.

The following day, Khaund presented the findings of a study on how social bots influence the delivery of news via social media during natural disasters. This study is captured in the paper “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Natural Disasters,” authored by Khaund, Al-Khateeb, Tokdemir and Agarwal and published in the conference proceedings available on Springer’s website.

Teams presented their challenge posters which were split up into two groups: opioids and disinformation. COSMOS team members Hussain, Al-Khateeb, PhD student Kiran Kumar Bandeli, Tokdemir and Agarwal submitted their poster “Tracking Cross-Platform Disinformation Campaigns” which won second place.

The COSMOS team is looking forward to participating in the 2019 SBP-BRiMS conference.

SBP-BRiMS Image Gallery