This is a recording of Global CENTRA Webinar on 25 April 2018 (at 9-10pm US EDT). The webinar series is hosted by CENTRA Project (http://www.globalcentra.org, supported by US NSF ACI Award 1550126), headquartered at the **ACIS Lab, University of Florida.
Topic: Analyzing Online Social Interactions for Cyber Security, Framing, and Network Interference
Speaker: Dr. Shyhtsun Felix Wu, University of California at Davis (http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~wu/)
00:00 Introducing the speaker today, Dr. S. Felix Wu, by Dr. Jose Fortes (CENTRA Steering Committee Chair and Director of ACIS Lab, University of Florida)
02:29 Presentation begins - "Solve some Social Science problem computationally" - Can we (as human beings), given infinite amount of time and resources, differentiate truthful from fake news/content?
23:21 Delivery algorithm
46:48 Example of Communication Theory - Information Cascade
54:53 Application #2 of data and computational/mathematical tools
59:00 Network Disruption
1:00:20 Final remarks: Misinformation; New design and architect for information delivery
1:03:00 End of webinar
Abstract:
The popularity of social media systems such as Facebook or Twitter provides us an opportunity for a global, large-scale data analytic study regarding both people and the content triggering their interactions.
While this trend enables us to explore social sciences computationally, it has also inspired computer scientists to adopt ideas from social sciences into the fundamentals of information processing. In this talk, as a computer scientist myself, I like to articulate this linkage between social sciences and computer science by showing three sample applications, cyber security, framing, and network interference. First, for cyber attacks, I will present our latest results in analyzing the spread of malicious URLs on social media systems in the context of Facebook public pages. We are particularly interested in answering questions such as "why, at this time, did this group of attacker accounts, launch this malicious URL under this page or this post?" The second issue is to study framing in the context of Fake/incomplete information with the possibility of intentional manipulation under certain important events. Third, we will discuss is under the general theme of interference between the social interactions among Social Media system users and the system artifacts being introduced, intentionally or unintentionally, by the service providers. As an example, we will show a behavioral analysis of, possibly, a state-sponsored electronic army against domestic revolution forces.
**Advanced Computing and Information Systems Laboratory (ACIS Lab): https://www.acis.ufl.edu/
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