Towards Understanding the Evolution and Narratives of Online Fringe and Extreme Communities and their Influence on Mainstream Online Communities

理解在线边缘和极端社区的演变和叙述及其对主流在线社区的影响

• 批准号: 2263166
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2263166
• 关键词: Towards; Understanding; Evolution; Narratives; Online

The modern Web suffers from various issues. Specifically, some of the most worrying issues are the evolution and dissemination of multiple conspiracy theories and disinformation, extreme and toxic communities targeting specific groups of particular sex, race, and religion. These communities often discuss politically incorrect and controversial topics. Since most mainstream online social networks (OSN) do not allow this content to be shared and discussed on their platforms, people that abide by these opinions tend to create communities in non-mainstream OSNs like 4chan, Voat, Gab, and Parler to communicate with like-minded people. The beliefs of these extremists often drive them to commit unspeakable crimes. A compelling case is Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a stabbing and shooting spree in California in May 2014. The perpetrator was a member of the online subculture of Incels and was radicalized online. Other examples of radicalization online realized in the real world include the numerous shootings in schools, mosques, and other public spaces. These threats to human life highlight the need to study and understand these tightly-knit communities with the ultimate goal of mitigating the impact they have on the real world. In addition to these extreme events, the Web buzzes with online chatter about evil cabals and secret organizations that control people and governments - conspiracy theories. Although suspicion has always been with the human race powered by our evolutionary drive to survive, it becomes extreme in the case of conspiracy theories and leads to apophenia. Apophenia refers to the notion of connecting previously unconnected ideas and theories with events without proof. Conspiracy theory adherents share their paranoid, unrealistic ideas that may cause panic, harm democracies, and gather other unsuspecting followers. Examples of dangerous conspiracy theories surround the COVID-19 global pandemic; pizzagate, which frames the 2016 US presidential candidate Hilary Clinton as the mastermind of global pedophile rings; and QAnon, a boldly defined super conspiracy theory, which integrates many conspiracy theories. Many studies and news press outlets explain the dangers and threats conspiracy theories pose to democracies and the general public. More specifically, conspiracy theories, like QAnon, proved to be extremely dangerous towards democracies as government officials and media often get involved in starting or promoting them to benefit their political agendas and interests. A prime example is January 6, 2020, when a pro-Qanon and pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol in a failed attempt to reinstate Donald Trump as the president of the US. Specifically, the FBI describes the QAnon movement as a domestic terror threat and its followers as "domestic extremists." To this end, we focus our research interests on understanding and characterizing toxic, extreme, and fringe communities online. We are interested in analyzing and describing the content these communities create and how it is disseminated across the Web. Thus, shedding light on how unsuspecting communities and individuals get affected when exposed to such content, targeted raid attacks, and disinformation and conspiracy theories. We intend to analyze the content these communities create and share on mainstream and non-mainstream OSNs to investigate how they affect each other and how users are linked to various communities on different platforms. Notably, we intend to deploy state-of-the-art tools to characterize these communities: topic, sentiment, and stance detection, hoaxes processes, named entity recognition, word embeddings, latent analysis, toxicity, and advanced machine and deep learning and image processing techniques. We aim to understand and characterize the content these communities create, how they penetrate other online unsuspecting communities, and how they influence them. Last, we target to investigate possible mitigation mechanisms.

现代网络存在各种问题。具体而言，一些最令人担忧的问题是多种阴谋论和虚假信息的演变和传播，针对特定性别，种族和宗教的特定群体的极端和有毒社区。这些社区经常讨论政治上不正确和有争议的话题。由于大多数主流在线社交网络（OSN）不允许在其平台上分享和讨论这些内容，因此遵循这些观点的人倾向于在4chan，Voat，Gab和Parler等非主流OSN中创建社区，与志同道合的人进行交流。这些极端分子的信仰往往驱使他们犯下无法形容的罪行。一个令人信服的案例是埃利奥特·罗杰，他于2014年5月在加州的一次刺伤和枪击狂欢中杀害了6人。肇事者是Incident网络亚文化的成员，在网上被激进化。在真实的世界中，网络激进化的其他例子包括在学校、清真寺和其他公共场所发生的无数枪击事件。这些对人类生命的威胁突出了研究和理解这些紧密联系的社区的必要性，最终目标是减轻它们对真实的世界的影响。除了这些极端事件之外，网络上还充斥着关于邪恶阴谋集团和控制人民和政府的秘密组织的在线聊天-阴谋论。尽管人类一直受到进化驱动的怀疑，但在阴谋论的情况下，它变得极端，并导致apophenia。Apophenia指的是将以前没有联系的想法和理论与没有证据的事件联系起来的概念。阴谋论的追随者分享他们的偏执，不切实际的想法，可能会引起恐慌，损害民主，并聚集其他不知情的追随者。危险阴谋论的例子围绕着COVID-19全球大流行;比萨饼门，它将2016年美国总统候选人希拉里克林顿框定为全球恋童癖团伙的主谋;以及QAnon，一个大胆定义的超级阴谋论，它整合了许多阴谋论。许多研究和新闻媒体解释了阴谋论对民主国家和公众构成的危险和威胁。更具体地说，像QAnon这样的阴谋论被证明对民主国家是极其危险的，因为政府官员和媒体经常参与启动或推动它们，以有利于他们的政治议程和利益。一个主要的例子是2020年1月6日，一群支持Qanon和支持特朗普的暴徒袭击了美国国会大厦，试图恢复唐纳德特朗普作为美国总统的失败。具体来说，联邦调查局将QAnon运动描述为国内恐怖威胁，其追随者为“国内极端分子”。“为此，我们将研究兴趣集中在了解和描述有毒，极端和边缘社区在线。我们有兴趣分析和描述这些社区创建的内容，以及这些内容如何在Web上传播。因此，揭示了毫无戒心的社区和个人在暴露于此类内容、有针对性的突袭攻击以及虚假信息和阴谋论时如何受到影响。我们打算分析这些社区在主流和非主流OSN上创建和共享的内容，以研究它们如何相互影响，以及用户如何与不同平台上的各种社区联系在一起。值得注意的是，我们打算部署最先进的工具来表征这些社区：主题，情感和立场检测，恶作剧过程，命名实体识别，词嵌入，潜在分析，毒性以及先进的机器和深度学习以及图像处理技术。我们的目标是了解和描述这些社区创建的内容，他们如何渗透到其他在线社区，以及他们如何影响他们。最后，我们的目标是研究可能的缓解机制。