Cyber Conflict as an Emergent Social Phenomenon

Author(s):  
Dorothy E. Denning

This chapter examines the emergence of social networks of non-state warriors launching cyber attacks for social and political reasons. It examines the origin and nature of these networks; their objectives, targets, tactics, and use of online forums; and their relationship, if any, to their governments. General concepts are illustrated with case studies drawn from operations by Strano Net, the Electronic Disturbance Theater, the Electrohippies, and other networks of cyber activists; electronic jihad as practiced by those affiliated with al-Qa’ida and the global jihadist movement associated with it; and operations by patriotic hackers from China, Russia, and elsewhere.

Author(s):  
Claire Taylor

Chapter 4 examines poverty dynamics in three distinct ways: (i) through an examination of conjunctural aspects of poverty and the events that are described as precipitating hardship, (ii) through a discussion of chronic poverty as social re-categorization, and (iii) through an exploration of gendered aspects of poverty. Together these case studies demonstrate that the discourses of poverty discussed in Chapter 2 are contested by the penetes themselves, e.g. women were able to use their social networks to resist the discourses that devalued their labour.


European View ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 178168582110046
Author(s):  
Sandra Kalniete ◽  
Tomass Pildegovičs

Against the backdrop of the deterioration of EU–Russia relations in recent years, there has been a shift in the awareness of hybrid threats all across the Union. At the same time, there is evidence of a growing political will to strengthen resilience to these threats. While hostile foreign actors have long deployed hybrid methods to target Europe, Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014, interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and repeated cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns aimed at EU member states have marked a turning point, exposing Western countries’ unpreparedness and vulnerability to these threats. This article analyses the EU’s resilience to hybrid warfare from institutional, regulatory and societal perspectives, with a particular focus on the information space. By drawing on case studies from member states historically at the forefront of resisting and countering Russian-backed disinformation campaigns, this article outlines the case for a whole-of-society approach to countering hybrid threats and underscores the need for EU leadership in a standard-setting capacity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuang Zhao ◽  
Xiapu Luo ◽  
Xiaobo Ma ◽  
Bo Bai ◽  
Yankang Zhao ◽  
...  

Proximity-based apps have been changing the way people interact with each other in the physical world. To help people extend their social networks, proximity-based nearby-stranger (NS) apps that encourage people to make friends with nearby strangers have gained popularity recently. As another typical type of proximity-based apps, some ridesharing (RS) apps allowing drivers to search nearby passengers and get their ridesharing requests also become popular due to their contribution to economy and emission reduction. In this paper, we concentrate on the location privacy of proximity-based mobile apps. By analyzing the communication mechanism, we find that many apps of this type are vulnerable to large-scale location spoofing attack (LLSA). We accordingly propose three approaches to performing LLSA. To evaluate the threat of LLSA posed to proximity-based mobile apps, we perform real-world case studies against an NS app named Weibo and an RS app called Didi. The results show that our approaches can effectively and automatically collect a huge volume of users’ locations or travel records, thereby demonstrating the severity of LLSA. We apply the LLSA approaches against nine popular proximity-based apps with millions of installations to evaluate the defense strength. We finally suggest possible countermeasures for the proposed attacks.


Africa ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Anthony

AbstractBefore the civil war, conversion to Islam for Igbo men resident in the predominantly Hausa city of Kano in northern Nigeria usually meant becoming Hausa. More recent converts, however, have retained their Igbo identity and created an organisation, the Igbo Muslim Community. Three case studies from the first group detail the process and criteria of becoming Hausa, including immersion in Hausa economic and social networks; three case studies from the second group demonstrate that, while Hausa-centred networks remain important, converts have worked to construct new, Igbo-centred support structures. The watershed in the changing relationship between religious and ethnic affiliation for Igbo converts is the end of the war in 1970 and resultant changes in Igbo perceptions of Muslims, and changes in Igbo community structures.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoel Horta Ribeiro ◽  
Virgílio A. F. Almeida ◽  
Wagner Meira Jr

The popularization of Online Social Networks has changed the dynamics of content creation and consumption. In this setting, society has witnessed an amplification in phenomena such as misinformation and hate speech. This dissertation studies these issues through the lens of users. In three case studies in social networks, we: (i) provide insight on how the perception of what is misinformation is altered by political opinion; (ii) propose a methodology to study hate speech on a user-level, showing that the network structure of users can improve the detection of the phenomenon; (iii) characterize user radicalization in far-right channels on YouTube through time, showing a growing migration towards the consumption of extreme content in the platform.


Temida ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Vida Vilic

Global social networks contributed to the creation of new, inconspicuous, technically perfect shape of criminality which is hard to suppress because of its intangible characteristics. The most common forms of virtual communications? abuse are: cyberstalking and harassment, identity theft, online fraud, manipulation and misuse of personal information and personal photos, monitoring e-mail accounts and spamming, interception and recording of chat rooms. Cyberstalking is defined as persistent and targeted harassment of an individual by using electronic communication. The victim becomes insecure, frightened, intimidated and does not figure out the best reaction which will terminate the harassment. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance and necessity of studying cyberstalking and to point out its forms in order to find the best ways to prevent this negative social phenomenon. Basic topics that will be analyzed in this paper are the various definitions of cyberstalking, forms of cyberstalking, and the most important characteristics of victims and perpetators.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Crespo

Forensic Linguistics is the analysis of the language which is related to law, either as evidence or as legal discourse. Authorship attribution is the task of identifying the author of a document when the language is used as evidence in a courtroom, so it will be of interest to police investigators and the wider judicial process. Recent advances in Forensic Linguistics are related to the analysis of texts coming from emails, social networks and messages coming from mobile phones. This work continues previous research and explores how different classification algorithms, the size of the text and the type of linguistic feature used in authorship attribution may affect the results in the authorship attribution of Spanish short messages on online forums. Important differences in precision have been assessed when varying both the size of the texts investigated and the algorithms used for classification.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 678-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cassilo ◽  
Jimmy Sanderson

Athletes who sustain concussions endure a variety of physical, mental, emotional, and social isolation effects as they rehabilitate. Accordingly, concussion recovery can induce grieving processes as athletes navigate the loss of athletic participation, social networks, and daily routine disruption. This research sought to gain a richer understanding of athletes’ lived experiences with concussions through grief discourse shared in online narratives. Through an analysis of athletes’ experiences shared via 58 blog posts on three concussion websites, the data reveal how athletes frame the losses that concussions bring into their lives, the subsequent feelings and expressions that result, along with how they eventually cope. The information disclosed in these online spaces can benefit parents, friends, coaches, and others to better understand concussion recovery, thereby enhancing their supportive communication and behaviors towards athletes as they rehabilitate from concussions.


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