Understanding Bots on Social Media - An Application in Disaster Response

abstract: Social media has become a primary platform for real-time information sharing among users. News on social media spreads faster than traditional outlets and millions of users turn to this platform to receive the latest updates on major events especially disasters. Social media bridges the gap between the people who are affected by disasters, volunteers who offer contributions, and first responders. On the other hand, social media is a fertile ground for malicious users who purposefully disturb the relief processes facilitated on social media. These malicious users take advantage of social bots to overrun social media posts with fake images, rumors, and false information. This process causes distress and prevents actionable information from reaching the affected people. Social bots are automated accounts that are controlled by a malicious user and these bots have become prevalent on social media in recent years. In spite of existing efforts towards understanding and removing bots on social media, there are at least two drawbacks associated with the current bot detection algorithms: general-purpose bot detection methods are designed to be conservative and not label a user as a bot unless the algorithm is highly confident and they overlook the effect of users who are manipulated by bots and (unintentionally) spread their content. This study is trifold. First, I design a Machine Learning model that uses content and context of social media posts to detect actionable ones among them; it specifically focuses on tweets in which people ask for help after major disasters. Second, I focus on bots who can be a facilitator of malicious content spreading during disasters. I propose two methods for detecting bots on social media with a focus on the recall of the detection. Third, I study the characteristics of users who spread the content of malicious actors. These features have the potential to improve methods that detect malicious content such as fake news.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Fiscal contingency planning for banking crises

There is constant demand for an estimate of the likely fiscal costs of future banking crises, but little precision can be expected in such an estimate. The author shows how information that is typically available to authorities could be used to get a general sense of the order of magnitude of the direct fiscal liability. What is required for such an estimate? 1) Information about the size and composition of the bank's balance sheets. 2) Expert assessments of the accuracy of the accounting data and of specific short-term risks to which the components are known to be subject. The author's method distinguishes between losses that have already crystallized and the changing risks for the immediate future. By including contingency planning for banking collapse in their fiscal calculations, authorities may risk destabilizing expectations or worsening the moral hazard in the system. But the risks of contingency planning generally outweigh the risks of sending confused signals. Insisting on ignorance is a poor way to protect against announcement errors that trigger panic.Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,National Governance

Examining the Impact of Emojis on Disaster Communication: A Perspective from the Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Communication is a purposeful process, especially during disasters, when emergency management officials and citizen journalists attempt to disseminate relevant information to as many affected people as possible. X (previously Twitter), a popular computer-mediated communication (CMC) platform, has become an essential resource for disaster information given its ability to facilitate real-time communication. Past studies on disasters have mainly concentrated on the verbal-linguistic conventions of words and hashtags as the means to convey disaster-related information. Little attention has been given to non-verbal linguistic cues, such as emojis. In this study, we investigate the use of emojis in disaster communication on X by using uncertainty reduction theory as the theoretical framework. We measured information uncertainty in individual tweets and assessed whether information conveyed in external URLs mitigated such uncertainty. We also examined how emojis affect information uncertainty and information dissemination. The statistical results from analyzing tweets related to the 2018 California Camp Fire disaster show that information uncertainty has a negative impact on information dissemination, and the negative impact was amplified when emojis depicted items and objects instead of facial expressions. Conversely, external URLs reduced the negative impact. This study sheds light on the influence of emojis on the dissemination of disaster information on X and provides insights for both academia and emergency management practitioners in using CMC platforms

COVID-19 pandemic: A snapshot of global economic repercussions and possible retaliation

Both human and economic cost of COVID-19 tsunami has continued to peak as nobody can even envisage when and how the shock will be solved. The value of life is uncountable on the other hand every sign clears that economic plunge will be prolonged and painful. The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of global economic disaster, focusing especially on major regions (China, USA, and Italy) due to COVID-19 and possible economic responses to mitigate the severity of this pandemic. The paper first provides an overview of global economic imbalances reflected by growing medical and financial emergencies, falling asset prices, tightening financial conditions, abatement of global GDP, world trade and supply chain disruptions, the constraint on tourism and traveling, raising uneven inflation, augmenting poverty, the suffering of migrants, political discord and antagonism may lead to being the unexpected worst economic downturn in the history. Along with identifying these imbalances, possible economic responses have been presented amid shock of COVID-19 and strategies for recoveries. The paper concludes that containing initiatives and economics of pandemics is not enough to beat the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) without solidarity and consensus among nations around the globe

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level

State of the art 2015: a literature review of social media intelligence capabilities for counter-terrorism

Overview This paper is a review of how information and insight can be drawn from open social media sources. It focuses on the specific research techniques that have emerged, the capabilities they provide, the possible insights they offer, and the ethical and legal questions they raise. These techniques are considered relevant and valuable in so far as they can help to maintain public safety by preventing terrorism, preparing for it, protecting the public from it and pursuing its perpetrators. The report also considers how far this can be achieved against the backdrop of radically changing technology and public attitudes towards surveillance. This is an updated version of a 2013 report paper on the same subject, State of the Art. Since 2013, there have been significant changes in social media, how it is used by terrorist groups, and the methods being developed to make sense of it.  The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 is an overview of social media use, focused on how it is used by groups of interest to those involved in counter-terrorism. This includes new sections on trends of social media platforms; and a new section on Islamic State (IS). Part 2 provides an introduction to the key approaches of social media intelligence (henceforth ‘SOCMINT’) for counter-terrorism. Part 3 sets out a series of SOCMINT techniques. For each technique a series of capabilities and insights are considered, the validity and reliability of the method is considered, and how they might be applied to counter-terrorism work explored. Part 4 outlines a number of important legal, ethical and practical considerations when undertaking SOCMINT work