Data Scams

Targeting platforms like Google and Facebook are usually seen as presenting tradeoffs between utility and privacy. This Article identifies and describes a different, non-privacy cost of targeting platforms: they make it easier for malicious actors to scam others. They do this by making it easier for scammers to reach the most promising victims, hide from law-enforcement authorities and others, and develop better scams. Technology offers potential solutions, since the same data and targeting tools that enable scams could help detect and prevent them, though neither platforms nor law-enforcement officials have both the incentives and expertise needed to develop and deploy those solutions. Moreover, these scams may illustrate a broader class of problems from targeting that go beyond utility versus privacy, suggesting that more aggressive interventions may be needed

Rumour stance and veracity classification in social media conversations

Social media platforms are popular as sources of news, often delivering updates faster than traditional news outlets. The absence of verification of the posted information leads to wide proliferation of misinformation. The effects of propagation of such false information can have far-reaching consequences on society. Traditional manual verification by fact-checking professionals is not scalable to the amount of misinformation being spread. Therefore there is a need for an automated verification tool that would assist the process of rumour resolution. In this thesis we address the problem of rumour verification in social media conversations from a machine learning perspective. Rumours that attract a lot of scepticism in the form of questions and denials among the responses are more likely to be proven false later (Zhao et al., 2015). Thus we explore how crowd wisdom in the form of the stance of responses towards a rumour can contribute to an automated rumour verification system. We study the ways of determining the stance of each response in a conversation automatically. We focus on the importance of incorporating conversation structure into stance classification models and also identifying characteristics of supporting, denying, questioning and commenting posts. We follow by proposing several models for rumour veracity classification that incorporate different feature sets, including the stance of the responses, attempting to find the set that would lead to the most accurate models across several datasets. We view the rumour resolution process as a sequence of tasks: rumour detection, tracking, stance classification and, finally, rumour verification. We then study relations between the tasks in the rumour verification pipeline through a joint learning approach, showing its benefits comparing to single-task learning. Finally, we address the issue of transparency of model decisions by incorporating uncertainty estimation methods into rumour verification models. We then conclude and point directions for future research

Towards a Critical Social Epistemology for Social Media

What are the proper epistemic aims of social media sites? A great deal of social media critique is in the grips of an Epistemic Apocalypse narrative, which claims that the technologies associated with social media have catastrophically undermined our traditional knowledge-generating practices, and that the remedy is to recreate our pre-catastrophe practices as closely as possible. This narrative relies on a number of questionable assumptions, and problematically narrows the imaginative possibilities for redesigning social media. Our goal in this paper is to shake off the epistemic apocalypse narrative and offer a better account of the epistemic aims of social media. I will pursue a critical approach to social epistemology that appreciates the non-ideal features of epistemic systems, and the ways in which knowledge production can be a site of domination, and apply this framework to thinking about the epistemic design of social media sites. I will argue that social systems ought to pursue three distinct epistemic goals: promoting good epistemic outcomes for users, realising epistemically good institutional features, and achieving structural epistemic justice. Although these goals are often mutually supportive, I will consider a number of cases in which these values lead to dilemmas about how to design epistemic institutions, which can only be resolved by appealing to ethical considerations. I will close by considering some ways in which social media might realise these aims

The Psychology of Fake News

This volume examines the phenomenon of fake news by bringing together leading experts from different fields within psychology and related areas, and explores what has become a prominent feature of public discourse since the first Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election campaign. Dealing with misinformation is important in many areas of daily life, including politics, the marketplace, health communication, journalism, education, and science. In a general climate where facts and misinformation blur, and are intentionally blurred, this book asks what determines whether people accept and share (mis)information, and what can be done to counter misinformation? All three of these aspects need to be understood in the context of online social networks, which have fundamentally changed the way information is produced, consumed, and transmitted. The contributions within this volume summarize the most up-to-date empirical findings, theories, and applications and discuss cutting-edge ideas and future directions of interventions to counter fake news. Also providing guidance on how to handle misinformation in an age of “alternative facts”, this is a fascinating and vital reading for students and academics in psychology, communication, and political science and for professionals including policy makers and journalists

The history and sociology of computer science and technology, collected vol. 4

A historiography and source material

The Philosophy of Online Manipulation

Are we being manipulated online? If so, is being manipulated by online technologies and algorithmic systems notably different from human forms of manipulation? And what is under threat exactly when people are manipulated online? This volume provides philosophical and conceptual depth to debates in digital ethics about online manipulation. The contributions explore the ramifications of our increasingly consequential interactions with online technologies such as online recommender systems, social media, user friendly design, microtargeting, default settings, gamification, and real time profiling. The authors in this volume address four broad and interconnected themes: What is the conceptual nature of online manipulation? And how, methodologically, should the concept be defined? Does online manipulation threaten autonomy, freedom, and meaning in life and if so, how? What are the epistemic, affective, and political harms and risks associated with online manipulation? What are legal and regulatory perspectives on online manipulation? This volume brings these various considerations together to offer philosophically robust answers to critical questions concerning our online interactions with one another and with autonomous systems. The Philosophy of Online Manipulation will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy, digital ethics, philosophy of technology, and the ethics of manipulation

PUBLISHING FAKE NEWS FOR PROFIT SHOULD BE PROSECUTED AS WIRE FRAUD

PUBLISHING FAKE NEWS FOR PROFIT SHOULD BE PROSECUTED AS WIRE FRAU

Learning About Oneself: An Essential Process to Confront Social Media Propaganda Against the Resettlement of Syrian Refugees

Research Problem: Public reaction to the 2015-2016 resettlement of Syrian refugees to Canada ranged from strong support to active resentment. This study explored some of those reactions: those of host society youth. It examined the process of this youth learning about themselves in the context of the social media propaganda about the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and investigated how the public opinion about the refugee resettlement affected their perception of their roles in the integration and inclusion of these newcomers. Research questions: 1.How do youth construe online interactions about the Syrian refugee crisis?\ud 2.How do youth construe their role in the integration and the inclusion of refugees in a context where the image of refugees is deeply influenced by social media? 3.What knowledge and skills do youth develop when they engage in analyzing their thoughts and behaviours in regards to sensitive and controversial issues such as the refugee crisis and resettlement? 4.How could this knowledge and these skills facilitate their engagement in civic online reasoning and participatory politics? Methodology: The researcher conducted more than 160 hours of qualitative in-depth interviews with 42 host society youth between 18 and 24 years old from North America, Europe and the Middle East. For the purpose of this thesis, only data collected from the Canadian participants was analyzed and shared. The participants were recruited through a snowball sampling. They were active on social media, supportive of the Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada, but deliberately acting as passive bystanders whenever they encountered online posts and interactions about the Syrian refugee crisis. Adapting four techniques from George Kelly’s Personal Construct Psychology (Kelly’s self-characterization technique, Procter’s Perceiver Element Grid, Kelly’s Repertory Grid Test and Hinkle’s laddering technique), data collection included three to four interviews with each participant. The interviews provided the participants with opportunities to delve into their own construct systems and to reflect on the genesis of their constructs. Results and Conclusions: By reflecting on their own behaviours online, participants realized that they could control how social media influenced them, and shape the online image of the Syrian refugees in host countries. While their empathy towards refugees increased, participants identified factors that could lead to Islamophobia, racism and fear, and developed strategies to counterbalance them online. The process of learning about themselves was key to transform the participants from passive bystanders into active agents of change, ready to confront digital propaganda. Civic educators, social workers, curriculum developers, policy makers and parents concerned with the takeover of social media by hate speech proponents can apply these findings and help youth withstand manipulation and fight racism, hate speech, radicalization, and cyberbullying through the Get Ready to Act Against Social Media Propaganda model generated by this study. The model includes five iterative stages: Question, analyze, design, prepare and evaluate

ASA 2021 Statistics and Information Systems for Policy Evaluation

This book includes 40 peer-reviewed short papers submitted to the Scientific Conference titled Statistics and Information Systems for Policy Evaluation, aimed at promoting new statistical methods and applications for the evaluation of policies and organized by the Association for Applied Statistics (ASA) and the Dept. of Statistics, Computer Science, Applications DiSIA “G. Parenti” of the University of Florence, jointly with the partners AICQ (Italian Association for Quality Culture), AICQ-CN (Italian Association for Quality Culture North and Centre of Italy), AISS (Italian Academy for Six Sigma), ASSIRM (Italian Association for Marketing, Social and Opinion Research), Comune di Firenze, the SIS – Italian Statistical Society, Regione Toscana and Valmon – Evaluation & Monitoring

Students’ experiences and perceptions of racial prejudice and discrimination on social networking sites

The present study set out to enhance the understanding of racial prejudice and discrimination on social networking websites or ‘sites’ from the perspective of university students. The research focused on discovering the perceived determinant factors of online racial prejudice and discrimination, as well as the impact social networking sites have on such behaviour. A qualitative research design was selected, which utilised the grounded theory method to explore and describe the experiences and perceptions of the eight participants recruited by means of purposive sampling. The aim of the study was achieved through individual semi-structured interviews and a concept definition questionnaire as data collection tools. The findings were compared to major extant theories and literature to determine whether existing explanations for the occurrence of this online behaviour is sufficient to account for this phenomenon. Using an iterative process of thematic analysis, the findings revealed several perceived factors that contribute to this behaviour. It was found that social networking site users, in all their psychological, psychosocial and cognitive attributes, are the primary source for this behaviour. Moreover, online racial prejudice and discrimination is initiated by the use of these platforms and their facilitative features, which has a perceived negative impact on social and racial relations. Grounded in the research data, an explanatory theory was formulated of individuals’ perceived behaviour on social networking sites, specifically pertaining to racial prejudice and discrimination, as well as to how this negatively manifests and causes racial division in society