COSMOS and Director Dr. Nitin Agarwal recently made headlines in Arkansas Business’ Technology section, and their article can be accessed here. There, in an interview with Lara Farrar, Dr. Agarwal delved into the various research being conducted by cosmographers, and touched upon the national concerns when it comes to discovering both the positive and the malicious narratives driven by social media. In their interview, Dr. Agarwal went into the foundations behind the research and why it’s so sought-after, especially in the context of the recent $5 million grant awarded to him and the COSMOS center by the US Army Research Office. Her article, part ofRead More →

The 12th International Conference on Complex Networks was held on 28–30 November 2023 at the French Riviera France. Complex Networks is an international conference that aims at bringing together researchers from different scientific communities working on areas related to complex networks. It is made of two types of contributions: theoretical developments arising from practical problems, and case studies where methodologies are applied. These contributions aim at stimulating the interaction between theoreticians and practitioners. This year, submissions were across a range of exciting topics like link prediction, graph signal processing, network neuroscience, networks, smart cities and smart grids, and many more. The following studies were acceptedRead More →

Dr. Nitin Agarwal, a distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, recently discussed his research on online influence operations, misinformation, and disinformation campaigns originating outside the US, with the “Braver Angels” podcast. In the podcast episode (split into Part 1 and Part 2), he discussed his extensive research on social media and online information behavior. There, he explained how tactics like the use of bots and artificial intelligence are employed to spread false narratives and manipulate public opinion. Dr. Agarwal emphasized the need for research, education, and collaboration between government and social media companies to address the negative impacts of such online activities,Read More →

When it comes to the international stage, conflicts may arise between distant countries, oftentimes leading to fighting by proxy or in and through affiliated countries, such as the case in the current Ukraine war. For example, in the recent conflicts in Ukraine, a current issue is how countries like the US or organizations like NATO fund and support troops on the ground from afar. In this regard, cognitive warfare has become a keystone of the modern military, and COSMOS’ director Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s research, which he presented to NATO this November, has informed both NATO and general military operations. Cognitive warfare has existed for asRead More →

In today’s interconnected world, the dissemination of information through social media has been unprecedented. Not all information posted and shared is truthful or unbiased. In recent years, social media platforms have been used by malicious actors or groups to misinform and manipulate thus threatening our society at large. Social media can be easily weaponized to sow discord, thus fomenting unrest amongst audiences with the intent to create behavior change. The latest IEEE Internet Computing special issue on cyber social health highlights developments of social media analytics used to gain a better understanding of online human behavior, as research in social media analytics has seen significantRead More →

Graduate student Adeola Adesoba has been selected as a winner of The New Face of Tech scholarship. The 1,000 Dreams Fund’s scholarship program aims to fund and fuel the aspirations of talented female college students pursuing careers in S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). Adeola is one out of 40 selected winners chosen based on the quality of their submission, including a demonstrated commitment to their career dream in tech and a clear vision for how winning the New Face of Tech program will help them further accelerate progress towards their dream. “We are extremely proud of Adeola Adesoba for winning the prestigious andRead More →

COSMOS is pushing the boundaries of information behavior research with its new publication about the dark side of information operations, which is the negative phenomenon associated with the management of information in the online environment.  In the journal article “Combining advanced computational social science and graph theoretic techniques to reveal adversarial information operations” doctoral students Mustafa Alassad and Billy Spann and COSMOS director Dr. Nitin Agarwal introduce a method to identify malicious behavior and the actors responsible for propagating this behavior via online social networks. The researchers presented advanced socio-technical methods such as deviant cyber flash mob (DCFM) detection and focal structure analysis (FSA) thatRead More →

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 →

Joseph Kready and Thomas Marcoux won $10,000 by placing third in the Walton Family Foundation Graduate Division of the 20th annual Arkansas Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition. The duo competed as team Face-To-Face introducing an innovative technology that creates Avatar-based chatbots that replace existing text-based chatbot solutions. Face-to-Face is the first University of Arkansas at Little Rock team to place in the Graduate Division since 2009. This year, the competition was conducted with the help of videoconferencing technologies. 18 teams from eight Arkansas universities virtually presented their innovative ideas and business plan which were judged by volunteers from Arkansas’s private and public sector business,Read More →

On Friday, August 30th, doctoral student Zachary Stine presented research from an ongoing comparative study regarding online religious communities.  Stine and fellow researchers Dr. Nitin Agarwal and Dr. James Deitrick, used Reddit to try to understand the differences and similarities between the religious cultures Buddhism and Christianity by analyzing their discussion text for specific lexicons on a more structural level.   Stine described using topic modeling  in order to look at how both communities discuss certain topics. Buddhist and Christian communities were chosen simply because they had the largest amount of discussion text available. The researchers anticipated possible problems with this study, particularly the issue ofRead More →