New Analytics for Measuring and Countering Social Influence and Persuasion of Extremist Groups
Abstract
Internet connectivity and online freedom of expression have contributed to the formation of massive virtualcommunities. Information Cascades (ICs) in which tens and in some case hundreds of thousands of individualsparticipate to spread information and opinions across the globe are now common. ICs point to moments of heightened resonance among individuals and groups that often lead to collective behaviors. ICs often reflect shortterm rumors, riots, trends or fads, but they also point to longer term social movements, and some, including those used to recruit ???foreign fighters??? for groups such as ISIS, and others that oppose violence and promote interreligious and intercultural understanding, are of critical significance. To understand the beliefs, values, and intentions of these communities and the ICs they promote, the performer will develop automated approaches informed by social science todetermine what types of information ???goes viral??? and under what circumstances. They will develop novelmeasurement and analytic technologies for detecting ICs and understanding the ideological orientations ofparticipating communities. Specifically, They will embed social psychological concepts of influence and persuasion into formal models and ground these models in specific socio-cultural groups of interest. This approach will help us to identify core features and underlying mechanisms of ICs and to reverse engineer group-specific diffusion dynamics to design targeted counter-persuasion campaigns, and measure their effectiveness by tracking their diffusion on social media, shifts in online attitudes, and their effects in natural environments. They will employ ethnographic methods to determine the degree of correspondence between virtual and on the ground discourse communities.The team leverages expertise in social psychology, artificial intelligence, cultural anthropology, network science, mass communications, big data analysis and optimization, and theories of influence and persuasion to explore the phenomenon of Information Cascades. Team members have collaborative research experiences that culminated in contributions to a forthcoming book, Illuminating Dark Networks: The Study of Clandestine Groups and Organizations and multiple peer-reviewed publications from prior ONR-funded research.Previous studies of online message content and network topology fail to identify individuals who spread informationand have limited utility for predicting the growth of ICs. We will therefore consider a wider variety of featuresdrawn from social science research. Based on our previous and ongoing research we hypothesize that information cascades are dependent on: (1) cultural and religious characteristics of the community in which they are located; (2) characteristics of community members both online and in person; (3) techniques used to persuade individuals to join in ICs; and, (4) characteristics of relationships among these individuals. They also hypothesize that online ICs sharefeatures with rumors that circulate in on the ground social communities and that there are strong connectionsbetween face to face and virtual communities at levels ranging from local to transnational.To assess these hypotheses, the performer has four primary research objectives:1. Embed findings from social science research on influence and persuasion into formal models of ICs.2. Ground models for several real socio-cultural groups using their online social media.3. Devise methodologies to predict viral trends in Internet based communities4. Devise methodologies to determine effective counter-messaging strategies.Substantively they will focus on the diffusion of violent and counter-violent ideologies in Muslim communities.Within each of these objectives, we will also explore relationships between online ICs and those in naturalenvironments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 26, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141612015
Entities
People
- Hasan Davulcu
Organizations
- Arizona State University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy