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- University News Archive - UA ��Ƶlogo /news-archive/tag/samer-al-khateeb/ UA ��Ƶlogo Thu, 24 May 2018 13:01:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Social bots disrupt online communication about natural disasters /news-archive/2018/05/24/social-bots-natural-disasters/ Thu, 24 May 2018 13:01:28 +0000 /news/?p=70649 ...]]> Researchers at the University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo are studying how social bots influence the delivery of news via social media during major disasters. The study examines the role of social bots – automated Twitter accounts that attempt to affect or influence the behaviors of others – and their coordination and communication patterns with complex organizational structures to disseminate information during four natural disasters that occurred in 2017. The paper, “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Natural Disasters,” will be discussed at the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation to be held July 10-13 in Washington D.C. , a Ph.D. student in computer and information science at UA ��Ƶlogo, is the lead author who will present the paper. She is also a researcher at (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science. Khaund also presented this work at the UA ��Ƶlogo Student Research and Creative Works Showcase and was awarded first place in the graduate student technology division. The paper’s co-authors include Dr. Samer Al-Khateeb, a postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, Dr., a research project analyst at the office of Medicaid Inspector General and a postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, and Agarwal. Researchers collected data from Twitter during Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria as well as the 7.1-magnitude Central Mexico earthquake that killed 370 people on Sept. 19, 2017. The study resulted in the collection of more than 1.2 million tweets generated by more than 800,000 Twitter accounts. The researchers detected the presence of social bots in the collected dataset and studied the social networks of the top ranked bot accounts as well as the top ranked non-bot accounts (humans) and then compared both networks. They discovered that social bots, which evolve constantly and become more sophisticated as time progresses, can disrupt discourse in online spaces. While humans have more tightly knit online communities, social bots tend to make rather weaker connections that result in a lack of a sense of belonging in the online community. Analysis of their content revealed that the discourse was not just limited to the disaster events. Non-relevant hashtags including hoaxes and alternate narratives were latched on to the event-specific hashtags and were disseminated in Spanish, Arabic, French, and Japanese, among other languages. In future research, COSMOS investigators hope to understand the different strategies that social bots use to coordinate disinformation campaigns in which online discourse is successfully manipulated. The research is supported in part by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR), U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Maulden-Entergy endowment at UA ��Ƶlogo. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. Researchers gratefully acknowledge the support. ]]> Student research and creative works winners announced /news-archive/2018/05/04/student-research-winners/ Fri, 04 May 2018 21:47:21 +0000 /news/?p=70436 ...]]> The winners of the 2018 Student Research and Creative Works Showcase at the University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo were announced during an awards ceremony May 1 in the Student Services Center. Students presented more than 150 research and creative works April 12 in the Jack Stephens Center. Student projects were judged on the novelty and clarity of their research, the soundness of their methodology, the potential application of their findings, and the student’s ability to explain their project to an expert and lay audience. A complete list of winners and their projects include: Undergraduate Winners Art First Place: Corrie Green, “The New African-American Women:Exploring Intersectionality in Non-traditional Casting” First Place (tie): Thomas Jackson, “Concept Statement for the play Art by Yasmina Reza” Economics First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “The 1920 Merchant Marine Act: An Outdated and Protectionist Law Disturbing Economic Growth” First Place (tie): Logan Vickery and Nick Stevens, “The Cost of Responsibility: Impacts on Rental Prices of the Implied Warrant of Habitability” Education First Place: Madison Christie, “Visual Verse: Translating English Poems into ASL” Second Place: Cameryn Kirkham, “Teaching Charlie May Simon as an Author, Artist, and Arkansan” Engineering First Place: J’von Jackson, “Venturi Scrubber Design for Syngas System” Second Place: Begros Asgeirsdottir, “Utilization of Rainwater for Cooling House Interior” Life & Physical Science First Place: Davonte Hokes, “Investigation of Bio-Inspired Polymeric Coating for Improvement in ORR Activity of Amidomacrocyclic Cobal (III) Catalyst Complexes” Second Place: Emily Anderson and Cordell Gilreath, “Development for Lyme Disease” Third Place: Marina Avram, “Algal Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting Nanocatalysts Nickel/Iron Oxides” Social Science First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “Financial Impact of the Jones Act” Second Place: Emily Elam, “500 Fiddle Tunes: Transcriptions of Billy Mathews’ Old-Time Archive” Third Place: Cynthia Wyman, “Intellectual and Hungry: Assessing the State of Campus Food Insecurity” Technology First Place: Deepali Lal, “Are Alcohol Establishments Marketing Crime?” Second Place: Yumeng Ye, “A Project – First Approach to Teaching Entity Resolution and Identity Management” Humanities First Place: El-Noor Ahkter, “The Color of Women” First Place (tie): Michael Caysido, “Aram II’yich Khachaturian and the Use of Folk Songs in His Compositions” Second Place: Emily Junkans, “Phonetic Features of Native Spanish Speakers Learning English” Physical Science First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “Novel Renewable Resource Based Nanocomposites for Removal and Recovery of Phosphorus from Contaminated Wastewaters” Second Place: Nathan Taylor, “Ionizing Radiation Protection by Inhibition of PP2A” Second Place (tie): Samantha Macchi, “Supercapacitor application of phosphorus and nitrogen co-doped carbon materials from renewable precursor materials” Service Work and Professional Application First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “How Spanish Interpreting at the 12th Street Clinic Can Lead to Medical School” GRADUATE WINNERS Biology First Place: Diamond McGehee with M. Lahiani, F. Irwin, and M. Green, “Investigation of the Effects of Carbon –Based Nanomaterials on the Metabolomics Level in Plants” Engineering First Place: Trigun Maroo, “A Novel Gripper System for Corrugated Box Grasping and Manipulation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” First Place (tie): Ali Abdulhussein, “Facile fabrication of a free-standing superhydrophobic and superoleophilic carbon nanofiber-polymer block that effectively absorbs oils and chemical pollutants from water” Health Science First Place: Asween Marco, Naveen Patil, Jane Voyles, Yan Egbe, and Leonard Mukasa. “The Threat of Tuberculosis Transmission Among the US-born: Lessons from Two Outbreaks, Arkansas” Second Place: Elizabeth Burnham, “The Social (Media) Social Work(er)” Life Science Second Place: Rebekah White, “Toxic Effects of Copper and Nickel on Synechocystis PCC 6803” Life & Physical Science First Place: Amita Nakarmi and Rebecca Moreira, “Phosphate Removal From Contaminated Waters” Second Place: Dane Hudson, “Cylic Electron Flow Prevents Photoinhibition in Solanum habrochaites Under Drought Stress” Physical Science First Place: Busra Ergul, Mahbuba Begum, Nancy Kariuki, and Deborah Myers. “Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity of Platinum Thin Films with Different Densities” First Place (tie): Daniel Nde, “Algae-Biotemplated Water-splitting Nanocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction” Professional Studies First Place: Thu Nguyen, “Do In-house Investor Relations Professionals in Real Estate Management Use PR and Strategic Communications Principles?” Second Place: Raad Alawajji, Zeid A. Nima, Ahmed K. Hashoosh, Karrer M. Alghazali, Emilie Darrigues, Nigel Kelly (undergraduate), Ashley Strohmeyer (undergraduate), and Ali Abdulhussein (presenter). “Fabrication of Transparent Superhydrophobic Polytetrafluoroethylene Coating” Social Science First Place: Jennifer Watkins: “Why don’t they listen to me: A qualitative interpretive meta synthesis of a child’s perception of their sexual abuse” Second Place: Margaret Kealy-Machella, “What’s App: ��Ƶlogo AFB Mobile App Communication Plan” Systems Engineering First Place: Rajat Singh, “Flexible Control of Synergistic Group of Muscles” Technology First Place (tie): Tuja Khaund and Samer Al-Khateeb. “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Crisis Weather Events” Second Place: Evan Xiangwen Liu, “Deep Neutral Networks Self-taught Learning” Second Place: Chen Xu, “Monitoring Traffic through IDS on OpenStack Cloud” In the photo above right, UA ��Ƶlogo student Corrie Green (right) talks about her project, “The New African-American Woman: Exploring Intersectionality in Non-Traditional Casting,” to Jana McAuliffe, who was judging student works at the Student Research and Creative Works Showcase. Photo by Benjamin Krain]]> Research explores how online narratives on refugees shift over time /news-archive/2018/03/27/online-narratives-refugees/ Tue, 27 Mar 2018 15:11:32 +0000 /news/?p=69838 ...]]> A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo are studying how the mass migration of refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries into Europe has created a shift in the migrant narrative in online communication. The paper, “Analyzing Shift in Narratives Regarding Migrants in Europe via Blogosphere,” has been accepted in the workshop at the 40th annual, a premier conference in information retrieval, to be held March 26-29 in Grenoble, France. The lead author of the paper, , a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies) – a research group led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, will travel to France to present the research at the conference. The researchers analyzed blogs to study a shift in narratives in the blogosphere toward refugees or migrants in Europe from 2015 to 2016. They used the tool to analyze more than 9,000 posts that talked about the influx of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and North African countries in Europe. “Social media is largely considered as a great democratizing platform,” Agarwal said. “However, not all voices are heard equally. Rather, only a few narratives get amplified, creating a democratic deficit. At a time where falsehoods travel faster and farther than truth, being able to computationally identify leading narratives would tremendously aid the information vetting process, helping the society in defeating disinformation.” Co-authors include, a third-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at COSMOS, Dr. Samer Al-khateeb, postdoctoral research fellow at COSMOS, and Agarwal. “There has been little research carried out in the computational narratology domain, and this paper puts forward an interesting case in identifying shift in narratives with respect to an event to know what resonates in the blogosphere for a given time period,” Bandeli said. “We rely on computational concepts to study these shifts.” In this paper, the researchers used the migrant crisis in Europe as a case study to observe the change in sentiments of citizens toward migrants from positive (sympathetic and supportive) to negative (angry) and to understand the shift in a narrative on the blogosphere. “Conventionally, human effort is needed to read text to identify any narrative,” Hussain said. “This paper is a first step in computationally identifying a shift in narratives. Improving on this method and transferring this laborious task to machines will make the narrative analysis scalable.” In the future, the researchers plan to build a model to identify the narrative in any given online text. “Employing such a model to continuously monitor streaming social media content can help detect any deviant narratives like misinformation or propaganda,” Hussain said. “Being able to identify deviant narratives at an early stage can help stem the spread of deviance on social media and build effective counter-narratives.” This work is supported in part by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Office, and the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowment at the UA-��Ƶlogo. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.]]> Team COSMOS wins Best Paper Award at conference /news-archive/2017/12/05/cosmos-best-paper-award/ Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:19:44 +0000 /news/?p=68721 ...]]> A group of University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo students has won the Best Paper Award from the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA) for their paper studying blogs’ effect on the information flow of Venezuelan migration. Esther Mead, a doctoral student from Sheridan researching information science and information quality, was the lead author for the paper, The paper explored how blogs disseminate information regarding social and political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As a case study, the researchers examined nearly 30,000 blog posts from a Venezuelan community collected between August 2003 to March 2017 to determine if Venezuelan blogs were indeed discussing concerns in the region and possible migration due to these concerns. “This paper establishes the basis for using blog analysis for studying socio-political awareness, presenting the Venezuelan economic crisis as an example,” Mead said. “ Our decision to write this paper was sparked by our motivation to highlight the blogosphere as a legitimate starting point for extracting social media data for discovering trends and valuable insights about populations.” The analysis revealed that the frequency and content of posts change over time, reflecting changes in the socio-political landscape of the region, such as protests, the decline in quality of life factors like food and medicine, and interest in migration from Venezuela, Mead said. “This paper sets the stage for future work using Blogtrackers and other natural language processing tools and techniques for blog analysis as a possible approach for anticipating events, like protests, migration, and refugee scenarios,” Mead said. “This information can provide actionable insights to emergency responders, humanitarian assistance organizations, and policy and decision makers.” All of the paper’s co-authors are members of the UA ��Ƶlogo Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), led by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Maulden-Entergy Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Science. Co-authors include Agarwal, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, doctoral student from Hyderabad, India, studying computer and information science; Mohammad Shiblee Nooman, master’s student from Dhaka, Bangladesh, majoring in information quality; and Samer Al-khateeb, doctoral student from Baghdad, Iraq, studying computer and information science. The paper was presented at the Seventh International Conference on Social Media Technologies, Communication, and Informatics held Oct. 8-12 in Athens, Greece. This is the third year in a row that a researcher from COSMOS has won the Best Paper Award from an IARIA conference. The research is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Fund at the University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo. ]]> Agarwal honored as international IARIA fellow /news-archive/2017/10/27/agarwal-honored-international-iaria-fellow/ Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:24:46 +0000 /news/?p=68375 ...]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and information science professor at the University of Arkansas at ��Ƶlogo, was recently honored for a prestigious international fellowship for his achievements in social media and technology research. Agarwal was honored as a fellow of the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA) during the held Oct. 8-12 in Athens, Greece. Every semester, the international organization for their outstanding research, their scientific contributions to the organization’s events, and their continuous leadership roles in conferences. Agarwal, who also is the director of the UA ��Ƶlogo Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS), is highly respected for his social media research, and he continues to work with influential national and international organizations such as NATO, U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Lab, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation. His research focuses on studying the role of socio-technical systems, especially social media in conducting cyber campaigns such as Saudi Women’s efforts to raise awareness regarding inequitable and gender-biased laws; Autism support groups’ efforts to debunk misinformation campaigns run by anti-vaccine groups; anti-West, anti-NATO disinformation campaigns run by pro-Russian media and groups; and ISIS’ radicalization and recruitment campaigns. During the conference, Agarwal delivered the conference’s Oct. 11 keynote address, “Fake News, Social Media, and Bots.” “I talked about the various research efforts at COSMOS, primarily our studies on examining mobilization and coordination of information campaigns ranging from awareness of the autism spectrum disorder to women’s rights issues to conducting deviant acts threatening democratic principles and institutions,” Agarwal said. “I spoke in depth about our studies supported by several DoD (Department of Defense) multi-year grants, on examining how social media is used for weaponizing narratives, manipulating discourse through misinformation or disinformation campaigns, recruitment, and radicalization, and the fake news phenomenon.” Agarwal also talked about how social media analysis tools and methodologies he and his team have developed are used by Department of Defense employees, NATO public affairs officers, and strategic communication officers. Most recently, COSMOS began working with George Mason University to establish a Department of Homeland Security-funded Center for Crime Investigation and Network Analysis. The center will study the role of the dark web, dark markets, and crypto currencies by transnational crime organizations to influence thinking, provoke hysteria and chaos, and affect instability. Additionally, Agarwal moderated a panel, “Dealing with Citizen-centric Social News: A Behavioral View.” The panel brought experts from telecommunication, computational science, and information science domains who have tremendous expertise in understanding socio-technical behavior evolution. The panel aimed to present a well-rounded perspective of social media’s role in citizen journalistic efforts in news production, distribution, and consumption. , research project analyst at the Office of Medicaid Inspector General in ��Ƶlogo and research associate at COSMOS, also served on the panel. Agarwal also presented a paper co-authored with his doctoral students, Esther Mead, , Samer Al-khateeb, and Mohammad Shiblee Nooman. The paper, “Assessing Situation Awareness through Blogosphere: A Case Study on Venezuelan Socio-Political Crisis and the Migrant Influx,” explored how blogs disseminate information regarding social and political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As a case study, the researchers examined nearly 30,000 blog posts from a Venezuelan community collected between August 2003 to March 2017 to determine if Venezuelan blogs were indeed discussing concerns in the region and possible migration due to these concerns. “Our analysis showed that the blogosphere is indeed being used as a platform for citizens to discuss these issues,” Agarwal said. “Of particular interest is the keyword trend analysis that shows that blogs are being used to discuss issues associated with quality of life and interest in migration away from Venezuela as a result of the crisis. We believe that this study can be used as a starting point to show the value of analyzing blogs in facilitating humanitarian assistance efforts.”]]> UA ��Ƶlogo doctoral student presents research on social cyber forensics /news-archive/2017/09/27/samer-alkhateeb/ Wed, 27 Sep 2017 13:04:03 +0000 /news/?p=68035 ...]]> Samer Al-Khateeb, computer and information sciences doctoral student, has been working as a research and teaching assistant with Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the UA ��Ƶlogo Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, since 2013 as part of Agarwal’s research group, UA ��Ƶlogo (COSMOS). “Samer started working with me in 2013 on U.S. Department of Defense funded projects to investigate how violent, extremist groups, terrorist organizations, state and non-state actors use social media technologies to manipulate public discourse, weaponize narratives, disseminate propaganda, and recruit and radicalize,” Agarwal said. “His work on these projects is extremely critical and timely. His research cuts across the disciplinary silos and pushes the fringes of our understanding of emergent behaviors, decentralized and unorganized organizations.” On Sept. 1, Al-Khateeb presented a paper, “When Citizen Journalism Goes Rogue,” about bad citizen journalism cases at the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies 5th International Conference in New York City. “This presentation is about the rise of citizen journalism in the social media era,” Al-Khateeb said. “There are many cases where people report events before the traditional media. In many cases, this is a good thing. However, people can also report fake news and spread misinformation. If that news is fake, it can be bad for society. We presented case studies were citizen journalism went rogue.” In July, Al-Khateeb presented his research entitled, “A Social-Cyber Forensics Approach to Understand Twitter & Blogs’ Influence on Anti-NATO Propaganda Campaigns,” during the Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction Conference held July 5-8 in Washington, D.C. The presentation explored how an online deviant group used different social media channels and techniques to spread propaganda and misinformation against the Trident Juncture Exercise conducted by NATO forces in Europe in 2015. Al-Khateeb used social network measures and social cyber forensics to identify influential information actors and uncover hidden relations between anti-NATO operatives. “These groups use Twitter to build an audience (followers), then they steer their followers to blogs where they frame their narratives,” Al-Khateeb said. “In this work, we tried to find the relationships between the online deviant groups on Twitter and their blogs and websites. We did this by running social network analysis and social cyber forensics techniques, which also helped us finding other people who are working with these groups to disseminate propaganda.” The information can help authorities and decision makers see how online groups are coordinating the spread of information and come up with countermeasures and counter narratives to combat these groups. Al-Khateeb and fellow doctoral student Muhammad Nihal Hussain also led a three-hour tutorial for conference presenters on social cyber forensics. At another conference in Washington, D.C., Al-Khateeb presented his paper, “Leveraging Social Network Analysis & Social Cyber Forensics Approaches to Study Cyber Propaganda Campaigns” at the first North American Social Networks Conference of the International Network For Social Network Analysis held July 26-30. Agarwal and Hussain co-authored the paper. Al-Khateeb, who also holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in applied science from UA ��Ƶlogo, is expected to graduate with his Ph.D. at the end of the semester and has plans to work at a university as a professor and researcher. He has signed a contract with Springer to write a book on social cyber forensics. His research areas include social network analysis, deviant behavioral modeling, deviant cyber flash mobs, cyber propaganda campaigns, social cyber forensics, social computing, data mining in social media, and the detection of bots. He most recently won awards at the 2017 UA ��Ƶlogo Engineering and Information Technology Open House, including the Excellence in Research Award, second place in the Most Innovative Award, and second place in the Societal Impact Award.]]>