2019/11/24 by Savvas Zannettou, Zannettou, Savvas
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Spam and Phishing Detection
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1911.10517
openalex publication_date 2019/11/24 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Web consists of numerous Web communities, news sources, and services,\nwhich are often exploited by various entities for the dissemination of false\ninformation. Yet, we lack tools and techniques to effectively track the\npropagation of information across the multiple diverse communities, and to\nmodel the interplay and influence between them. Also, we lack an understanding\nof what the role and impact of emerging communities and services on the Web\nare, and how such communities are exploited by bad actors that spread false and\nweaponized information. In this thesis, we study the information ecosystem on\nthe Web by presenting a typology that includes the various types of false\ninformation, the involved actors and their possible motives. Then, we follow a\ndata-driven cross-platform quantitative approach to analyze billions of posts\nfrom Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /pol/, and Gab, to shed light on: 1) how news and\nmemes travel from one Web community to another and how we can model and\nquantify the influence between Web communities; 2) characterizing the role of\nemerging Web communities and services on the Web, by studying Gab and two Web\narchiving services, namely the Wayback Machine and archive.is; and 3) how\npopular Web communities are exploited by state-sponsored actors for the purpose\nof spreading disinformation. Our analysis reveal that fringe Web communities\nlike 4chan's /pol/ and TheDonald subreddit have a disproportionate influence\non mainstream communities like Twitter with regard to the dissemination of news\nand memes. We find that Gab acts as the new hub for the alt-right community,\nwhile for Web archiving services we find that they can be misused to penalize\nad revenue from news sources with conflicting ideology. Finally, when studying\nstate-sponsored actors, we find that they were particularly influential in\nspreading news on popular communities like Twitter and Reddit.\n