Inauthentic Newsfeeds and Agenda Setting in a Coordinated Inauthentic Information Operation

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932110199
Author(s):  
Carl Ehrett ◽  
Darren L. Linvill ◽  
Hudson Smith ◽  
Patrick L. Warren ◽  
Leya Bellamy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
English Language ◽  
Internet Research ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Language Output

The 2015–2017 Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)’s coordinated information operation is one of the earliest and most studied of the social media age. A set of 38 city-specific inauthentic “newsfeeds” made up a large, underanalyzed part of its English-language output. We label 1,000 tweets from the IRA newsfeeds and a matched set of real news sources from those same cities with up to five labels indicating the tweet represents a world in unrest and, if so, of what sort. We train a natural language classifier to extend these labels to 268 k IRA tweets and 1.13 million control tweets. Compared to the controls, tweets from the IRA were 34% more likely to represent unrest, especially crime and identity danger, and this difference jumped to about twice as likely in the months immediately before the election. Agenda setting by media is well-known and well-studied, but this weaponization by a coordinated information operation is novel.

scholarly journals A Study on the Rationale of Social Media Use by the Students of King Khalid University

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayed Salahuddin Ahmed ◽  
Abdulkhaleq Q. A. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Smart Phone ◽  
Language Preference ◽  
Subject Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

s not it deplorable that in a country that tops in the entire world in using several social media sites does not utilize the same media in acquiring knowledge and skills? In Saudi Arabia, undergraduate students spend a significant amount of time on social media every day, but they are reluctant (or not motivated enough) to use the same media for educational purposes. This study was carried out on the undergraduate English majors of King Khalid University in Muhayil Asir in Saudi Arabia. In the English department, every student carries at least one smart phone with Internet connection, and they are found occupied with their phones on the campus, sometimes even in classrooms, but they are weak both in subject knowledge and skills of English language. The teachers-cum-researchers were baffled with students’ competence because regular users of Internet and social media are supposed to be updated with the subject knowledge as well as confident in using English language. The researchers designed an empirical study to explore students’ rationale of using the social media and their language preference. The study concludes with gloomy findings that students use the media mainly for entertainment and ineffective communication in English language. The worst fact is: they are not motivated enough to use the social media for educational purposes.

scholarly journals Update Chapter English Language Learning Using Social Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-271
Author(s):  
Evi Mahsunah
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

This study explores the changing students’ habit update status in social media into update chapter to increase their achievement in English. It is a learning strategy in English language teaching and learning using social media technology. The aim is to motivate students more active to read their literature and then share and discuss their reading in social media. The students not only have to update their chapter in reading, but also have to give comment or respond to their friends update. So, this strategy makes the students discuss their lesson more than usual. This study uses questioner and documentation technic to collect the data. Based on the data, it is known that students are already using social media for purposes that include the social and the educational. Update chapter make them using this technology in class/after class. Social media brings learning outside the classroom autonomous, independent, motivational and fun. Therefore, the students‘achievement in English language teaching and learning also increases significant.

Exploring register variation on Reddit

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aatu Liimatta
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
English Language ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Dimensional Approach ◽  
Register Variation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Instructional Focus ◽  
Research Material ◽  
The Social ◽  
On Line

Abstract While the language of the internet has been an increasingly popular research topic, there remain many understudied areas and topics which deserve more attention. This study explores register variation within the social media website Reddit using the multi-dimensional approach developed by Douglas Biber. Reddit, the third most popular English-language social media website after the giants Facebook and Twitter, is made up of thousands of user-created ‘subreddits’, subcommunities centered around different topics, where users make posts and comment on them. Many different communities and topic areas under one roof makes Reddit a particularly fruitful source of research material. In this paper, three register dimensions are extracted from data collected over one month from a group of thirty-seven subreddits: ‘On-line Subjective Production’, ‘Informational Style’ and ‘Instructional Focus’. These dimensions describe register variation within Reddit in meaningful ways. They are also in line with suggested register universals (Biber 2014).

scholarly journals Fake News Detection on Social Media Using A Natural Language Inference Approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Bidgoly ◽  
Hossein Amirkhani ◽  
Fariba Sadeghi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
News Item ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Statistical Features ◽  
Fake News ◽  
K Nearest Neighbors ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Embedding Methods

Abstract Fake news detection is a challenging problem in online social media, with considerable social and political impacts. Several methods have already been proposed for the automatic detection of fake news, which are often based on the statistical features of the content or context of news. In this paper, we propose a novel fake news detection method based on Natural Language Inference (NLI) approach. Instead of using only statistical features of the content or context of the news, the proposed method exploits a human-like approach, which is based on inferring veracity using a set of reliable news. In this method, the related and similar news published in reputable news sources are used as auxiliary knowledge to infer the veracity of a given news item. We also collect and publish the first inference-based fake news detection dataset, called FNID, in two formats: the two-class version (FNID-FakeNewsNet) and the six-class version (FNID-LIAR). We use the NLI approach to boost several classical and deep machine learning models including Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, Logistic Regression, k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machine, BiGRU, and BiLSTM along with different word embedding methods including Word2vec, GloVe, fastText, and BERT. The experiments show that the proposed method achieves 85.58% and 41.31% accuracies in the FNID-FakeNewsNet and FNID-LIAR datasets, respectively, which are 10.44% and 13.19% respective absolute improvements.

scholarly journals Polarity Classification Tool for Sentiment Analysis in Malay Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 259
Author(s):  
Normi Sham Awang Abu Bakar ◽  
Ros Aziehan Rahmat ◽  
Umar Faruq Othman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Sentiment Lexicon ◽  
The Social ◽  
Polarity Classification ◽  
Media Channels ◽  
Classification Tool

<p>The popularity of the social media channels has increased the interest among researchers in the sentiment analysis(SA) area. One aspect of the SA research is the determination of the polarity of the comments in the social media, i.e. positive, negative, and neutral. However, there is a scarcity of Malay sentiment analysis tools because most of the work in the literature discuss the polarity classification tool in English. This paper presents the development of a polarity classification tool called Malay Polarity Classification Tool(MaCT). This tool is developed based on the AFINN sentiment lexicon for English language. We have attempted to translate each word in AFINN to its Malay equivalent and later, use the lexicon to collect the sentiment data from Twitter. The Twitter data are then classified into positive, negative, and neutral. For the validation purpose, we collect 400 positive tweets, 400 negative tweets, and 200 neutral tweets, and later, run the tweets through our sentiment lexicon and found 90% score for precision, recall and accuracy. Our main contribution in the research is the new AFINN translation for Malay language and also the classification of the sentiment data.</p>

scholarly journals An Analysis of English Language Orthography, Typography and Grammar used by Millennial on Social Media Platforms

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Alia Khan ◽  
Prof. Mohammad Rizwan Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Education System ◽  
English Language ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms

Social media is a term with which most of the people around the world are well acquainted. The advancement of technology has provided a new medium through which we can propose, deliver, swap, and share our ideas without moving a single inch. It is a new avenue for conveying information and a trend which is now-a-days in vogue. From infants to adults, everyone is somehow in contact with the social media. Similarly, education system too has a profound influence of social media. From placement institutes, school authority, teachers, learners, to parents in fact every stakeholder of education system is somehow tied to social media. Jeff Bezos, CEO at Amazon.com once described the power of social media by asserting that “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends” (Pencak 2019). Thus, we can assume the potency and status of social media in our life. Though social media is affecting many significant areas of human life, but the area which itself is considered as a ‘systematic means of communication’ (that is ‘Language’) is too being swayed by this virtual medium. Social media has exceedingly affected English language skills. The paper explores how the social media has influenced linguistics habits of millennial, whether it has affected upcoming academicians in a positive or negative way, and what should be done in order to protect their linguistic habits from the negative influence of social media.

Agendamelding

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milad Minooie
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
Public Agenda ◽  
The Social ◽  
Coherent Picture ◽  
Personal Agenda ◽  
Social Media Agenda Setting

Abstract The present study tests the agendamelding theory, which posits that public agenda is the result of a process whereby audiences “meld” agendas from various media along with their personal agenda to form a coherent picture of society. To that end, the contributions of the traditional media agenda, the social media agenda, and the personal agenda of Iranian audiences to their public agenda are independently measured and compared against values predicted by theory. The findings indicate a strong social media agenda-setting effect in Iran (ρ = .83, p < .05) and a weak, non-significant traditional media agenda-setting effect (ρ = .28, p = .48). On average, actual contributions closely mirror values predicted by theory, suggesting that agendamelding is a viable theory for studying the audience-media relationship.

Expanding on “What Is the Social in Social Media?”: A Conversation with Geert Lovink

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Malloy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Network Architectures ◽  
Research Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Collective Production

In 1995, Geert Lovink started <nettime> with Pit Schultz. It expanded into many lists and languages and in the process demonstrated that English language and American-centric platforms do not have to be the lingua franca of the Internet. Lovink's contemporary work with the Institute of Network Cultures and its research networks, such as Unlike Us, has shaped a coalition that explores network architectures, the role of collective production, aesthetic tactics, and diverse, open information exchange. This introduction to the Epilogues focuses on his 2012 essay in e-flux -- “What Is the Social in Social Media?” -- asking three questions: Can you expand on what roles you envision for artists and writers in contemporary social media? How can we teach students to create in a difficult medium that so beautifully (and relentlessly) combines text, image, design, interactivity and collaboration? And how do you envision a social media of the future?

scholarly journals Islam and Social Media: Attitudes and Views

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 221
Author(s):  
Wafa Abu Hatab
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
English Language ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Use Of Social Media

<p>Social media has become an integral part of our daily life encapsulating time and place, creating new relations and fostering old ones not only on an individual level but also on social and global ones. This revolution in human interaction was led by the introduction of Facebook in 2004 that was followed by other social media platforms such as Twitter and Instegram. This electronic revolution swept over to reach mobile phones and to introduce new platforms such as WhatsApp and Viber. The present study investigated attitudes and views towards the use of social media in promoting Islam. A random sample of Facebook users was asked to fill in a questionnaire that tackled questions related to their attitudes towards the role of social media in promoting Islam, the linguistic influence of the social media on their English language skills when talking about Islam and the most preferred social media platform. . Respondents were then classified according to education and gender. The study revealed that the social media have affected the way the other is addressed when discussing Islamic topics. Despite some negative stands, the positive attitudes towards social media in promoting Islam prevailed. The views were influenced by the respondents’ age, gender and education. The linguistic influence of the social media on developing English skills was viewed positively. The Facebook was the most preferred social media platform. Further research is recommended on the interrelationships between social factors and views of social media. Code-switching among social media users and the effect on Arabic might be also investigated.</p>

Round-trip agenda setting: Tracking the intermedia process over time in the ice bucket challenge

Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1292-1308 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Mo Jang ◽  
Yong Jin Park ◽  
Hoon Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Round Trip ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Intermedia Agenda Setting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ice Bucket Challenge

Despite the social media’s agenda-setting power, the literature provides little understanding of how social media agendas survive and last long enough to trigger substantial public discussions. This study investigates this issue by tracking the ice bucket challenge campaign over an 18-week period. This article claims that the pattern of the intermedia process evolves over time along with the issue-attention cycle. We observed a round-trip intermedia agenda setting where the direction is reversed as the agenda waxes and wanes. Both social and mainstream media continued to generate a heightened level of issue attention after the buzz was cooled down.

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