PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Detecting influence campaigns on X with AI and network science

USC ISI researchers have developed machine learning models to identify coordinated inauthentic behaviors by accounts on X involved in influence campaigns around the world

2024-05-16
(Press-News.org) In the age of generative-AI and large language models (LLMs), massive amounts of inauthentic content can be rapidly broadcasted on social media platforms. As a result, malicious actors are becoming more sophisticated, hijacking hashtags, artificially amplifying misleading content, and mass resharing propaganda. 

These actions are often orchestrated by state-sponsored information operations (IOs), which attempt to sway public opinion during major geopolitical events such as the US elections, the Covid-19 pandemic, and more. 

Combating these IOs has never been more crucial. Identifying influence campaigns with high-precision technology will significantly reduce the misclassification of legitimate users as IO drivers, ensuring social media providers or regulators do not mistakenly suspend accounts while trying to curb illicit activities. 

In light of this, USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) researcher Luca Luceri is co-leading an effort funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to identify and characterize influence campaigns on social media. His most recent paper “Unmasking the Web of Deceit: Uncovering Coordinated Activity to Expose Information Operations on Twitter” was presented at the Web Conference on May 13, 2024. 

“My team and I have worked on modeling and identifying IO drivers such as bots and trolls for the past five to ten years,” Luceri said. “In this paper, we’ve advanced our methodologies to propose a suite of unsupervised and supervised machine learning models that can detect orchestrated influence campaigns from different countries within the platform X (formerly Twitter).” 

A fused network of similar behaviors 
Drawing from a comprehensive dataset of 49 million tweets from verified campaigns originating in six countries – China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela – Luceri and his team have honed in on five sharing behaviors on X that IO drivers participate in. 

These include co-retweeting (sharing identical tweets), co-URL (sharing the same links or URLs), hashtag sequence (using an identical sequence of hashtags within tweets), fast retweeting (quickly re-sharing content from the same users), and text similarity (tweets with resembling textual content). 

Previous research focused on building networks that mapped out each type of behavior, examining the similarities between individual users on X. However, Luceri and his team noticed that these accounts often employ many strategies at the same time, which meant that monitoring one behavioral trace was not enough. 

“We found that co-retweeting was massively used by campaigns in Cuba and Venezuela,” Luceri explained. “However, if we only examine co-retweeting without considering other behaviors, we would perform well in identifying some campaigns, such as those originating from Cuba and Venezuela, but poorly where co-retweeting was used less, such as in Russian campaigns.” 

To capture a broader range of coordinated sharing behaviors, the researchers constructed a unified similarity network called a Fused Network. Then, they applied machine learning algorithms fed by topological properties of the fused network to classify these accounts’ similarities and predict their future participation in IOs.

Luceri and his team found that this method could be applicable to campaigns across the world. Multiple X users within the same campaign, no matter where they are from, exhibited remarkable collective similarity in their actions. 

“I consider our work a paradigm shift in research methods, giving a new perspective in the identification of influence campaigns and their drivers,” said Luceri. 

Unlocking new opportunities 
The unsupervised machine learning model leverages well-known, yet underutilized network features achieving a 42% higher precision than other traditional approaches to detect influence campaigns. Luceri views this paper as a starting point that could open the way to further avenues of research.

“We can train models on the topological features of this similarity network, and make them work in complex scenarios: for instance, if different users from different countries interacted with each other, or more challenging situations where we have limited information about the campaigns,” Luceri remarked. 

Luceri also presented another paper “Leveraging Large Language Models to Detect Influence Campaigns in Social Media” at the Web Conference, which received the best paper award from the International Workshop on Computational Methods for Online Discourse Analysis (BeyondFacts’24). The paper examines the potential of using LLMs to recognize the signs of AI-driven influence campaigns. This is particularly crucial in the current climate, where AI-created media is pervasive. 

“These coordinated activities have consequences in real life,” said Luceri. “They have the power to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories that might lead to protests or attacks on our democracy, such as the interference of Russian trolls in the 2016 US election.” 

Luceri and his team are committed to continuing the search for alternative strategies to identify influence campaigns and protect users susceptible to influence.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Offering both colonoscopy and at-home tests doubled colorectal cancer screening

2024-05-16
The rate of colorectal cancer screenings more than doubled when patients were given a choice between which type of screening they wanted—a take-home kit or colonoscopy—compared to those who were only offered the colonoscopy, according to new research led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Facilitated through a community health center in which about half of patients had Medicaid insurance, the study—published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology—provides insights about how to boost screenings among groups ...

A powerful tool speeds success in achieving highly efficient thermoelectric materials

A powerful tool speeds success in achieving highly efficient thermoelectric materials
2024-05-16
HOUSTON, May 16, 2024 – Thermoelectric materials could play an important role in the clean energy transition, as they can produce electricity from sources of heat that would otherwise go to waste without generating additional greenhouse gases or requiring large up-front investment. But their promise has been slowed by the fact that most current thermoelectric materials don’t efficiently produce enough power to be useful for many practical applications. The search for new, more efficient materials involving complex chemical ...

Oropharyngeal cancer staging health record extraction using AI

2024-05-16
About The Study: The results of this study suggest that artificial intelligence may be associated with enhanced patient care and oncological decision-making in patients with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma through detection of localized versus advanced cancer stages. Further model refinement and external validation with electronic health records at different institutions are necessary to improve algorithm accuracy and clinical applicability. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Antoine Eskander, M.D., email antoine.eskander@mail.utoronto.ca. To access the ...

Airborne technology developed at USC brings new hope to map shallow aquifers in Earth’s most arid deserts

2024-05-16
Water shortages are expanding across the Earth. This is particularly acute in desert areas of the Middle East that are subject to both drought and extreme conditions such as flooding. As a result of these uncertainties, there is an increasing reliance on shallow aquifers to mitigate these shortages. However, the characteristics of these aquifers remain poorly understood due to the reliance on sporadic well logs for their management. To address this challenge a team of researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering along with collaborators ...

Mount Sinai experts to present new research on preeclampsia, preterm birth, doula care and more at the 2024 ACOG Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting

2024-05-16
Women’s health experts from the Raquel and Jaime Gilinski Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will present new research at the 2024 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting in San Francisco from May 17–19. Please let me know if you would like to coordinate an interview about their forthcoming presentations. Mount Sinai obstetricians and gynecologists are also available to comment on breaking news and other trending topics on prenatal care and women’s ...

Normothermic perfusion system extends life of organs waiting for transplant

2024-05-16
In the United States, about 30-40% of donor hearts aren't considered for transplant due to inadequate function in the donor.  This creates a drop in the number of donated hearts that are available to be matched with someone who needs a heart transplant. A team at University of Michigan Health led by Alvaro Rojas-Pena, M.D., a research investigator with the section of transplantation surgery at University of Michigan Health has spent the past eight years looking at better ways to transport organs for donation, specifically hearts, to improve the number of organs ...

Study: Large language models can’t effectively recognize users’ motivation, but can support behavior change for those ready to act

Study: Large language models can’t effectively recognize users’ motivation, but can support behavior change for those ready to act
2024-05-16
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Large language model-based chatbots have the potential to promote healthy changes in behavior. But researchers from the ACTION Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have found that the artificial intelligence tools don’t effectively recognize certain motivational states of users and therefore don’t provide them with appropriate information. Michelle Bak, a doctoral student in information sciences, and information sciences professor Jessie Chin reported their research in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Large language model-based chatbots — also known as generative conversational agents ...

In September, securities watchdogs bark more, bite less

2024-05-16
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Securities and Exchange Commission acts as Wall Street’s traffic cop, fining companies for such infractions as securities fraud and insider trading. New research from Texas McCombs finds another parallel between the SEC and traffic enforcement: pressure to meet self-imposed quotas. Assistant accounting professors Matthew Kubic and Sara Toynbee find that the agency files twice as many enforcement cases in September as in other months, a phenomenon they call the September spike. They also link the increase in cases to smaller fines that reduce what the government takes in from violators. The reason for the ...

New guide demystifies participation in ALS clinical research

New guide demystifies participation in ALS clinical research
2024-05-16
As researchers search for new insights into Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), there is an ever-greater need for data from clinical trials and research studies. However, many people living with ALS are not certain how to get involved with clinical research, and the demographics of current ALS clinical trial participants are not representative of the full population of people living with the disease worldwide.  To address the critical need for diversity and accessibility in ALS clinical trials and research studies, the Illinois-based Les Turner ALS Foundation has published a new ...

Lurie Children’s Hospital launches first peer-reviewed journal on health advocacy

2024-05-16
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago announces the launch of the Journal of Health Advocacy (JHA), the first of its kind peer-reviewed open access journal housed within the organization’s Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities. This new journal bridges the gap between knowledge and action to empower individuals and groups to address real-world challenges to health equity. It opened for submissions May 1, 2024. “Disseminating and recognizing advocacy that is so often successful ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

First-in-human trial shows promising results for DLL3-targeted antibody-drug conjugate SHR-4849 in relapsed small cell lung cancer

Ifinatamab deruxtecan demonstrates high response rate in previously treated extensive-stage small cell lung cancer: Phase 2 IDeate-Lung01 trial

Higher blood pressure in childhood linked to earlier death from heart disease in adulthood

AI helped older adults report accurate blood pressure readings at home

High blood pressure in childhood and premature cardiovascular disease mortality

Zidesamtinib shows durable responses in ROS1 TKI pre-treated NSCLC, including patients with CNS disease and ROS1 G2032R mutations

Crizotinib fails to improve disease-free survival in resected early-stage ALK+ NSCLC

Ivonescimab plus chemotherapy improves progression-free survival in patients with EGFR+ NSCLC following 3rd-generation EGFR-TKI therapy

FLAURA2 trial shows osimertinib plus chemotherapy improves overall survival in eGFR-mutated advanced NSCLC

Aumolertinib plus chemotherapy improves progression-free survival in NSCLC with EGFR and concomitant tumor suppressor genes: ACROSS 2 phase III study

New antibody-drug conjugate shows promising efficacy in EGFR-mutated NSCLC patients

Iza-Bren in combination with osimertinib shows 100% response rate in EGFR-mutated NSCLC, phase II study finds

COMPEL study shows continuing osimertinib treatment through progression with the addition of chemotherapy improves progression-free survival in EGFR-mutated NSCLC

CheckMate 77T: Nivolumab maintains quality of life and reduces symptom deterioration in resectable NSCLC

Study validates AI lung cancer risk model Sybil in predominantly Black population at urban safety-net hospital

New medication lowered hard-to-control high blood pressure in people with chronic kidney disease

Innovative oncolytic virus and immunotherapy combinations pave the way for advanced cancer treatment

New insights into energy metabolism and immune dynamics could transform head and neck cancer treatment

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Steven Heymsfield named LSU Boyd Professor – LSU’s highest faculty honor

Study prompts new theory of human-machine communication

New method calculates rate of gene expression to understand cell fate

Researchers quantify rate of essential evolutionary process in the ocean

Innovation Crossroads companies join forces, awarded U.S. Air Force contract

Using new blood biomarkers, USC researchers find Alzheimer’s disease trial eligibility differs among various populations

Pioneering advances in in vivo CAR T cell production

Natural medicines target tumor vascular microenvironment to inhibit cancer growth

Coral-inspired pill offers a new window into the hidden world of the gut

nTIDE September2025 Jobs Report: Employment for people with disabilities surpasses prior high

When getting a job makes you go hungry

Good vibrations could revolutionize assisted reproductive technology

[Press-News.org] Detecting influence campaigns on X with AI and network science
USC ISI researchers have developed machine learning models to identify coordinated inauthentic behaviors by accounts on X involved in influence campaigns around the world