1.6k citations · 5.7k across the 32 of their papers we have counts for
34 papers
Who Belongs Together? Topical and Social Structure in Bluesky Starter Packs
Sima Adleyba, Onur Varol
Bluesky starter packs are human curated collections of accounts and feeds aimed at helping users discover new communities, especially during onboarding. Prior research has examined…
Social Media Data Toolkit: Standardization and Anonymization of Social Network Datasets
Ali Najafi, Letizia Iannucci, Mikko Kivelä +1
The rapid diversification of social media platforms and the increasing restrictions on official APIs have significantly complicated cross-platform analysis. Researchers are often f…
A Bell experiment during inflation: probing quantum entanglement in tensor fluctuations through correlations of primordial scalar curvature perturbations
Pablo Tejerina-Pérez, Leonid Sarieddine, Daniele Bertacca +1
We propose a method that provides an observational signature of the quantum origin of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation. The method gives a prescription for testin…
Towards global equity in political polarization research
Max Falkenberg, Matteo Cinelli, Alessandro Galeazzi +18
With a folk understanding that political polarization refers to socio-political divisions within a society, many have proclaimed that we are more divided than ever. In this account…
Politics and Propaganda on Social Media: How Twitter and Meta Moderate State-Linked Information Operations
Nihat Mugurtay, Umut Duygu, Onur Varol
Why do Social Media Corporations (SMCs) engage in state-linked information operations? Social media can significantly influence the global political landscape, allowing governments…
Social Bots: Detection and Challenges
Kai-Cheng Yang, Onur Varol, Alexander C. Nwala +4
While social media are a key source of data for computational social science, their ease of manipulation by malicious actors threatens the integrity of online information exchanges…
TurkishBERTweet: Fast and Reliable Large Language Model for Social Media Analysis
Ali Najafi, Onur Varol
Turkish is one of the most popular languages in the world. Wide us of this language on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok and strategic position of the co…
Unsupervised detection of coordinated fake-follower campaigns on social media
Yasser Zouzou, Onur Varol
Automated social media accounts, known as bots, are increasingly recognized as key tools for manipulative online activities. These activities can stem from coordination among sever…
Hidden Citations Obscure True Impact in Science
Xiangyi Meng, Onur Varol, Albert-László Barabási
References, the mechanism scientists rely on to signal previous knowledge, lately have turned into widely used and misused measures of scientific impact. Yet, when a discovery beco…
Just Another Day on Twitter: A Complete 24 Hours of Twitter Data
Juergen Pfeffer, Daniel Matter, Kokil Jaidka +13
At the end of October 2022, Elon Musk concluded his acquisition of Twitter. In the weeks and months before that, several questions were publicly discussed that were not only of int…
#Secim2023: First Public Dataset for Studying Turkish General Election
Ali Najafi, Nihat Mugurtay, Ege Demirci +3
In the context of Turkey's upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections ("seçim" in Turkish), social media is playing an important role in shaping public debate. The increasin…
Should we agree to disagree about Twitter's bot problem?
Onur Varol
Bots, simply defined as accounts controlled by automation, can be used as a weapon for online manipulation and pose a threat to the health of platforms. Researchers have studied on…
Academic Support Network Reflects Doctoral Experience and Productivity
Ozgur Can Seckin, Onur Varol
Current practices of quantifying performance by productivity leads serious concerns for psychological well-being of doctoral students and influence of research environment is often…
Information Access Equality on Network Generative Models
Xindi Wang, Onur Varol, Tina Eliassi-Rad
It is well known that networks generated by common mechanisms such as preferential attachment and homophily can disadvantage the minority group by limiting their ability to establi…
Misinformation, Believability, and Vaccine Acceptance Over 40 Countries: Takeaways From the Initial Phase of The COVID-19 Infodemic
Karandeep Singh, Gabriel Lima, Meeyoung Cha +4
The COVID-19 pandemic has been damaging to the lives of people all around the world. Accompanied by the pandemic is an infodemic, an abundant and uncontrolled spreading of potentia…
Detection of Novel Social Bots by Ensembles of Specialized Classifiers
Mohsen Sayyadiharikandeh, Onur Varol, Kai-Cheng Yang +2
Malicious actors create inauthentic social media accounts controlled in part by algorithms, known as social bots, to disseminate misinformation and agitate online discussion. While…
Network Medicine Framework for Identifying Drug Repurposing Opportunities for COVID-19
Deisy Morselli Gysi, Ítalo Do Valle, Marinka Zitnik +8
The current pandemic has highlighted the need for methodologies that can quickly and reliably prioritize clinically approved compounds for their potential effectiveness for SARS-Co…
Scalable and Generalizable Social Bot Detection through Data Selection
Kai-Cheng Yang, Onur Varol, Pik-Mai Hui +1
Efficient and reliable social bot classification is crucial for detecting information manipulation on social media. Despite rapid development, state-of-the-art bot detection models…
Deception Strategies and Threats for Online Discussions
Onur Varol, Ismail Uluturk
Communication plays a major role in social systems. Effective communications, which requires transmission of the messages between individuals without disruptions or noise, can be a…
Arming the public with artificial intelligence to counter social bots
Kai-Cheng Yang, Onur Varol, Clayton A. Davis +3
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 sem…
Does putting your emotions into words make you feel better? Measuring the minute-scale dynamics of emotions from online data
Rui Fan, Ali Varamesh, Onur Varol +4
Studies of affect labeling, i.e. putting your feelings into words, indicate that it can attenuate positive and negative emotions. Here we track the evolution of individual emotions…
The spread of low-credibility content by social bots
Chengcheng Shao, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Onur Varol +3
The massive spread of digital misinformation has been identified as a major global risk and has been alleged to influence elections and threaten democracies. Communication, cogniti…
Online Human-Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation, and Characterization
Onur Varol, Emilio Ferrara, Clayton A. Davis +2
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 s…
Early Detection of Promoted Campaigns on Social Media
Onur Varol, Emilio Ferrara, Filippo Menczer +1
Social media expose millions of users every day to information campaigns --- some emerging organically from grassroots activity, others sustained by advertising or other coordinate…