Developing Socio-computational Capabilities to Evaluate Emerging Social Cyber Threats
Abstract
Social media has been harnessed by potential adversarial actors, paid trolls, and extremist organizations, to conduct disinformation campaigns, provoke hysteria, and coordinate nefarious acts. Social mediaÕs vulnerabilities revolve around the lack of effective global policies, enforcement, and most importantly, itÕs affordability to develop a false or misleading narrative before facts are released. Narratives on social media could be easily weaponized and propagated at frighteningly fast speeds. Such insidious threats that attempt to influence beliefs and behaviors need to be considered as modern weapons of cyber warfare. Terrorist groups and transnational crime organizations (TCOs) employ advanced communication tactics via a deep orchestration of a variety of existing and emerging social media platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Reddit, Twitch, VKontakte, SnapChat, Gab, Discord, BitChute, Parler, Rumble, MeWe, and the likes. In recent years, nefarious acts have been largely conducted as flash events, where deviant groups self-organize, coordinate in cyberspace, conduct an unanticipated act, and disperse, almost akin to a flash mob. To an outsider such acts may look arbitrary, however extensive coordination happens in the background. Deviant flash mob phenomenon are the emerging social cyber threats that can cause stock market frenzy, violent protests, highly coordinated cyberattacks, etc. Given the increasing volume, velocity, and variety of deviant flash mob activities, research is warranted to develop capabilities grounded in social science theories and computational methodologies to evaluate emerging social cyber threats that can serve the needs of our military at strategic, tactical, and operational levels. We are in the infancy of where participatory media, technology, and policy meet Ñ a lawless Wild West of social media existsÑcalling for rigorous studies on socio-technical behavioral modeling, content moderation and transparency in social media, platform affordances, cyberthreat assessment, cyber-diplomacy, and social computing technologies. Key goals of the proposed effort are, (1) identify key gaps in computational, social and behavioral sciences research to advance the understanding of deviant socio-technical behaviors; (2) shape the futureforward research agenda to design and develop strategies to counter cyber-threats in an emerging socio-technical context; (3) and operationalize applications for near real-time analysis for the warfighter, by improving on current experimental software platforms that the DoD utilizes as well as consolidating programming efforts across the board. Funding is sought to expand the research, development, education, and training efforts in, (i) developing rapid response capabilities to evaluate emerging social cyber threats; (ii) transitioning research into usable tools; (iii) developing technology innovation and entrepreneurial efforts; and (iv) training and outreach. The effort will bridge big data and social computing research communities for a synergistic advancement of big data research infrastructure and security for the modern social and communication space. Developed tools will help assess the state of the discontent and unrest among the people and design risk-averse strategies to enhance human security for U.S. forces, NATO forces, citizens, and international aid workers. Training exercises will be conducted to enhance U.S. workforce with skills in the challenging and changing domain of big data analytics, data management, machine learning, and AI with applications in security. Proposed effort aims to spark innovation and entrepreneurial aspirations in big data and its applications aligning with the knowledge-based economic development mission of the state of Arkansas. Keywords: social media, flash mobs, collective action, connective action, social network analysis, AI, NLP, toxicity, influence, contagion, diffusion,
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 24, 2023
- Source ID
- W911NF2310011
Entities
People
- Nitin Agarwal
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- United States Army
- University of Arkansas at Little Rock