Understanding potential cyber-armies in elections: A study of Taiwan

Ming Hung Wang*, Nhut Lam Nguyen, Shih chan Dai, Po Wen Chi, Chyi Ren Dow

*此作品的通信作者

研究成果: 雜誌貢獻期刊論文同行評審

3 引文 斯高帕斯(Scopus)

摘要

Currently, online social networks are essential platforms for political organizations to monitor public opinion, disseminate information, argue with the opposition, and even achieve spin control. However, once such purposeful/aggressive articles flood social sites, it would be more difficult for users to distinguish which messages to read or to trust. In this paper, we aim to address this issue by identifying potential "cyber-armies/professional users" during election campaigns on social platforms. We focus on human-operated accounts who try to influence public discussions, for instance, by publishing hundreds/thousands of comments to show their support or rejection of particular candidates. To achieve our objectives, we collected activity data over six months from a prominent Taiwan-based social forum before the 2018 national election and applied a series of statistical analyses to screen out potential targets. From the results, we successfully identified several accounts according to distinctive characteristics that corresponded to professional users. According to the findings, users and platforms could realize potential information manipulation and increase the transparency of the online society.

原文英語
文章編號2248
期刊Sustainability (Switzerland)
12
發行號6
DOIs
出版狀態已發佈 - 2020 3月 1

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • 地理、規劃與發展
  • 可再生能源、永續發展與環境
  • 環境科學(雜項)
  • 能源工程與電力技術
  • 管理、監督、政策法律

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