Emilio Ferrara
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3589713 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Emilio Ferrara |
| NOMBRES | Emilio |
| APELLIDO | Ferrara |
| FIRMA | FERRARA E |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1942-2831 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 32 |
| OBRAS COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| OBRAS COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Charting the landscape of nefarious uses of generative artificial intelligence for online election interference
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLMs) pose significant risks, particularly in the realm of online election interference. This paper explores the nefarious applications of GenAI, highlighting their potential to disrupt democratic processes through deepfakes, botnets, targeted misinformation campaigns, and synthetic identities. By examining recent case studies and public incidents, we illustrate how malicious a…
Uncovering coordinated cross-platform information operations
Information operations (IOs) pose a significant threat to the integrity of democratic processes, with the potential to influence election-related online discourse. In anticipation of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we present a study aimed at uncovering the digital traces of coordinated IOs on X (formerly Twitter). Using our machine learning framework for detecting online coordination, we analyze a dataset comprising election-related convers…
Fairness and Bias in Artificial Intelligence
The significant advancements in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare decision-making, medical diagnosis, and other domains have simultaneously raised concerns about the fairness and bias of AI systems. This is particularly critical in areas like healthcare, employment, criminal justice, credit scoring, and increasingly, in generative AI models (GenAI) that produce synthetic media. Such systems can lead to unfair outcomes and perpet…
Parasocial diffusion
We examine an unexpected but significant source of positive public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic—K-pop fandoms. Leveraging more than 7 million tweets related to mask-wearing and K-pop between March 2020 and December 2021, we analyzed the online spread of the hashtag #WearAMask and vaccine-related tweets amid anti-mask sentiments and public health misinformation. Analyses reveal the South Korean boyband BTS as one of the most signi…
Should ChatGPT be biased? Challenges and risks of bias in large language models
As generative language models, exemplified by ChatGPT, continue to advance in their capabilities, the spotlight on biases inherent in these models intensifies. This paper delves into the distinctive challenges and risks associated with biases specifically in large-scale language models. We explore the origins of biases, stemming from factors such as training data, model specifications, algorithmic constraints, product design, and policy decisions…
Social bot detection in the age of ChatGPT
We present a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities in social bot detection in the context of the rise of sophisticated AI-based chatbots. By examining the state of the art in social bot detection techniques and the more salient real-world application to date, we identify gaps and emerging trends in the field, with a focus on addressing the unique challenges posed by AI-generated conversations and behaviors. We suggest potenti…
Twitter spam and false accounts prevalence, detection, and characterization
The issue of quantifying and characterizing various forms of social media manipulation and abuse has been at the forefront of the computational social science research community for over a decade. In this paper, I provide a (non-comprehensive) survey of research efforts aimed at estimating the prevalence of spam and false accounts on Twitter, as well as characterizing their use, activity, and behavior. I propose a taxonomy of spam and false accou…
Digital Civic Participation and Misinformation during the 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election
From fact-checking chatbots to community-maintained misinformation databases, Taiwan has emerged as a critical case-study for citizen participation in politics online. Due to Taiwan’s geopolitical history with China, the recent 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election brought fierce levels of online engagement led by citizens from both sides of the strait. In this article, we study misinformation and digital participation on three platforms, namely L…
Disrupting the Covid-19 Misinfodemic With Network Interventions
Amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, a highly troublesome influx of viral misinformation threatens to exacerbate the crisis through its deleterious effects on public health outcomes and health behavior decisions. This “misinfodemic” has ignited a surge of ongoing research aimed at characterizing its content, identifying its sources, and documenting its effects. Noticeably absent as of yet is a cogent strategy to disrupt misinformation. We start wit…
Political polarization drives online conversations about Covid ‐19 in the United States
Since the outbreak in China in late 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has come to dominate online conversations. By linking 2.3 million Twitter users to locations within the United States, we study in aggregate how political characteristics of the locations affect the evolution of online discussions about COVID-19. We show that COVID-19 chatter in the United States is largely shaped by political polarization. …
Characterizing social media manipulation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
Democracies are postulated upon the ability to carry out fair elections, free from any form of interference or manipulation. Social media have been reportedly used to distort public opinion nearing election events in the United States and beyond. With over 240 million election-related tweets recorded between 20 June and 9 September 2020, in this study we chart the landscape of social media manipulation in the context of the upcoming 3 November 20…
What types of Covid-19 conspiracies are populated by Twitter bots
With people moving out of physical public spaces due to containment measures to tackle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, online platforms become even more prominent tools to understand social discussion. Studying social media can be informative to assess how we are collectively coping with this unprecedented global crisis. However, social media platforms are also populated by bots, automated accounts that can amplify certain topics of di…
Does Streaming Esports Affect Players' Behavior and Performance
In this work, we analyze what effect streaming gameplay on Twitch has on players' in-game behavior and performance. We hypothesized that streaming can act as a form of implicit incentive to boost players' performance and engagement. To test this hypothesis, we continuously collected data about all Twitch streams related to a popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game, League of Legends (LoL), and data of all LoL matches played during the…
Arming the public with artificial intelligence to counter social bots
The increased relevance of social media in our daily life has been accompanied by efforts to manipulate online conversations and opinions. Deceptive social bots—automated or semi-automated accounts designed to impersonate humans—have been successfully exploited for these kinds of abuse. Researchers have responded by developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to arm the public in the fight against social bots. Here we review the literature on d…
Evolution of bot and human behavior during elections
Online social media have become one of the main communication platforms for political discussion. The online ecosystem, however, does not only include human users but has given a space to an increasing number of automated accounts, referred to as bots, extensively used to spread messages and manipulate the narratives others are exposed to. Although social media service providers put increasing efforts to protect their platforms, malicious bot acc…
Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign
Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls …
Could Social Bots Pose a Threat to Public Health
AffiliationsJon-Patrick Allem is with the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Emilio Ferrara is with the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey
Online Human-Bot Interactions
Increasing evidence suggests that a growing amount of social media content is generated by autonomous entities known as social bots. In this work we present a framework to detect such entities on Twitter. We leverage more than a thousand features extracted from public data and meta-data about users: friends, tweet content and sentiment, network patterns, and activity time series. We benchmark the classification framework by using a publicly avail…
Language, demographics, emotions, and the structure of online social networks
Social networks affect individuals’ economic opportunities and well-being. However, few of the factors thought to shape networks—culture, language, education, and income—were empirically validated at scale. To fill this gap, we collected a large number of social media posts from a major US metropolitan area. By associating these posts with US Census tracts through their locations, we linked socioeconomic indicators to group-level signals extracte…
Disinformation and social bot operations in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been coordinated by means of bots, social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that try to disguise themselves as legitimate human users. In this study, we describe one such operation that occurred in the run up…
BotOrNot
While most online social media accounts are controlled by humans, these platforms also host automated agents called social bots or sybil accounts. Recent literature reported on cases of social bots imitating humans to manipulate discussions, alter the popularity of users, pollute content and spread misinformation, and even perform terrorist propaganda and recruitment actions. Here we present BotOrNot, a publicly-available service that leverages m…
The rise of social bots
Today's social bots are sophisticated and sometimes menacing. Indeed, their presence can endanger online ecosystems as well as our society.
Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion
Social media have been extensively praised for increasing democratic discussion on social issues related to policy and politics. However, what happens when this powerful communication tools are exploited to manipulate online discussion, to change the public perception of political entities, or even to try affecting the outcome of political elections? In this study we investigated how the presence of social media bots, algorithmically driven entit…
Defining and identifying Sleeping Beauties in science
Significance Scientific papers typically have a finite lifetime: their rate to attract citations achieves its maximum a few years after publication, and then steadily declines. Previous studies pointed out the existence of a few blatant exceptions: papers whose relevance has not been recognized for decades, but then suddenly become highly influential and cited. The Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen “paradox” paper is an exemplar Sleeping Beauty. We s…
Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign
Does Streaming Esports Affect Players' Behavior and Performance
In this work, we analyze what effect streaming gameplay on Twitch has on players' in-game behavior and performance. We hypothesized that streaming can act as a form of implicit incentive to boost players' performance and engagement. To test this hypothesis, we continuously collected data about all Twitch streams related to a popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game, League of Legends (LoL), and data of all LoL matches played during the…
Forensic analysis of phone call networks
Could Social Bots Pose a Threat to Public Health
AffiliationsJon-Patrick Allem is with the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Emilio Ferrara is with the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey
Disrupting the Covid-19 Misinfodemic With Network Interventions
Amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, a highly troublesome influx of viral misinformation threatens to exacerbate the crisis through its deleterious effects on public health outcomes and health behavior decisions. This “misinfodemic” has ignited a surge of ongoing research aimed at characterizing its content, identifying its sources, and documenting its effects. Noticeably absent as of yet is a cogent strategy to disrupt misinformation. We start wit…
Forensic analysis of phone call networks
Measurement and Analysis of Online Social Networks Systems
Clustering memes in social media streams
Defining and identifying Sleeping Beauties in science
Significance Scientific papers typically have a finite lifetime: their rate to attract citations achieves its maximum a few years after publication, and then steadily declines. Previous studies pointed out the existence of a few blatant exceptions: papers whose relevance has not been recognized for decades, but then suddenly become highly influential and cited. The Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen “paradox” paper is an exemplar Sleeping Beauty. We s…
BotOrNot
While most online social media accounts are controlled by humans, these platforms also host automated agents called social bots or sybil accounts. Recent literature reported on cases of social bots imitating humans to manipulate discussions, alter the popularity of users, pollute content and spread misinformation, and even perform terrorist propaganda and recruitment actions. Here we present BotOrNot, a publicly-available service that leverages m…
The rise of social bots
Today's social bots are sophisticated and sometimes menacing. Indeed, their presence can endanger online ecosystems as well as our society.
Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion
Social media have been extensively praised for increasing democratic discussion on social issues related to policy and politics. However, what happens when this powerful communication tools are exploited to manipulate online discussion, to change the public perception of political entities, or even to try affecting the outcome of political elections? In this study we investigated how the presence of social media bots, algorithmically driven entit…
Online Human-Bot Interactions
Increasing evidence suggests that a growing amount of social media content is generated by autonomous entities known as social bots. In this work we present a framework to detect such entities on Twitter. We leverage more than a thousand features extracted from public data and meta-data about users: friends, tweet content and sentiment, network patterns, and activity time series. We benchmark the classification framework by using a publicly avail…
Language, demographics, emotions, and the structure of online social networks
Social networks affect individuals’ economic opportunities and well-being. However, few of the factors thought to shape networks—culture, language, education, and income—were empirically validated at scale. To fill this gap, we collected a large number of social media posts from a major US metropolitan area. By associating these posts with US Census tracts through their locations, we linked socioeconomic indicators to group-level signals extracte…
Disinformation and social bot operations in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been coordinated by means of bots, social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that try to disguise themselves as legitimate human users. In this study, we describe one such operation that occurred in the run up…
Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls …
Could Social Bots Pose a Threat to Public Health
AffiliationsJon-Patrick Allem is with the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Emilio Ferrara is with the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey
Arming the public with artificial intelligence to counter social bots
The increased relevance of social media in our daily life has been accompanied by efforts to manipulate online conversations and opinions. Deceptive social bots—automated or semi-automated accounts designed to impersonate humans—have been successfully exploited for these kinds of abuse. Researchers have responded by developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to arm the public in the fight against social bots. Here we review the literature on d…
Evolution of bot and human behavior during elections
Online social media have become one of the main communication platforms for political discussion. The online ecosystem, however, does not only include human users but has given a space to an increasing number of automated accounts, referred to as bots, extensively used to spread messages and manipulate the narratives others are exposed to. Although social media service providers put increasing efforts to protect their platforms, malicious bot acc…
Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign
Political polarization drives online conversations about Covid ‐19 in the United States
Since the outbreak in China in late 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has come to dominate online conversations. By linking 2.3 million Twitter users to locations within the United States, we study in aggregate how political characteristics of the locations affect the evolution of online discussions about COVID-19. We show that COVID-19 chatter in the United States is largely shaped by political polarization. …
Characterizing social media manipulation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election
Democracies are postulated upon the ability to carry out fair elections, free from any form of interference or manipulation. Social media have been reportedly used to distort public opinion nearing election events in the United States and beyond. With over 240 million election-related tweets recorded between 20 June and 9 September 2020, in this study we chart the landscape of social media manipulation in the context of the upcoming 3 November 20…
What types of Covid-19 conspiracies are populated by Twitter bots
With people moving out of physical public spaces due to containment measures to tackle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, online platforms become even more prominent tools to understand social discussion. Studying social media can be informative to assess how we are collectively coping with this unprecedented global crisis. However, social media platforms are also populated by bots, automated accounts that can amplify certain topics of di…
Does Streaming Esports Affect Players' Behavior and Performance
In this work, we analyze what effect streaming gameplay on Twitch has on players' in-game behavior and performance. We hypothesized that streaming can act as a form of implicit incentive to boost players' performance and engagement. To test this hypothesis, we continuously collected data about all Twitch streams related to a popular Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game, League of Legends (LoL), and data of all LoL matches played during the…
Digital Civic Participation and Misinformation during the 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election
From fact-checking chatbots to community-maintained misinformation databases, Taiwan has emerged as a critical case-study for citizen participation in politics online. Due to Taiwan’s geopolitical history with China, the recent 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election brought fierce levels of online engagement led by citizens from both sides of the strait. In this article, we study misinformation and digital participation on three platforms, namely L…
Disrupting the Covid-19 Misinfodemic With Network Interventions
Amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, a highly troublesome influx of viral misinformation threatens to exacerbate the crisis through its deleterious effects on public health outcomes and health behavior decisions. This “misinfodemic” has ignited a surge of ongoing research aimed at characterizing its content, identifying its sources, and documenting its effects. Noticeably absent as of yet is a cogent strategy to disrupt misinformation. We start wit…
Twitter spam and false accounts prevalence, detection, and characterization
The issue of quantifying and characterizing various forms of social media manipulation and abuse has been at the forefront of the computational social science research community for over a decade. In this paper, I provide a (non-comprehensive) survey of research efforts aimed at estimating the prevalence of spam and false accounts on Twitter, as well as characterizing their use, activity, and behavior. I propose a taxonomy of spam and false accou…
Fairness and Bias in Artificial Intelligence
The significant advancements in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare decision-making, medical diagnosis, and other domains have simultaneously raised concerns about the fairness and bias of AI systems. This is particularly critical in areas like healthcare, employment, criminal justice, credit scoring, and increasingly, in generative AI models (GenAI) that produce synthetic media. Such systems can lead to unfair outcomes and perpet…
Parasocial diffusion
We examine an unexpected but significant source of positive public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic—K-pop fandoms. Leveraging more than 7 million tweets related to mask-wearing and K-pop between March 2020 and December 2021, we analyzed the online spread of the hashtag #WearAMask and vaccine-related tweets amid anti-mask sentiments and public health misinformation. Analyses reveal the South Korean boyband BTS as one of the most signi…
Should ChatGPT be biased? Challenges and risks of bias in large language models
As generative language models, exemplified by ChatGPT, continue to advance in their capabilities, the spotlight on biases inherent in these models intensifies. This paper delves into the distinctive challenges and risks associated with biases specifically in large-scale language models. We explore the origins of biases, stemming from factors such as training data, model specifications, algorithmic constraints, product design, and policy decisions…
Computer Science (20 obras) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (17 obras) · Social media (15 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Spam and Phishing Detection (11 obras) · Internet privacy (9 obras) · Politics (9 obras) · Data science (8 obras) · Law (7 obras) · Social Media and Politics (7 obras)