Muhammad Hussain

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Data Scientist at Equifax Inc.

YouTube, since its inception in 2005, has grown to become largest online video sharing website. It's massive user-base uploads videos and generates discussion by commenting on these videos. Lately, YouTube, akin to other social media sites, has become a vehicle for spreading fake news, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and radicalizing content. Howe...

Social media, with its accessibility and anonymity, has helped malicious actors to thrive and coordinate several campaigns. Such users successfully utilize social media to coordinate different kinds of movements that could influence political aspects, damage the crucial infrastructure and affect the economy of several countries around the world. Ma...

Every minute more than five-hundred hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube, and we can only expect this number to increase. Although YouTube is the most popular video sharing website, studies conducted on this platform are sparse. The lack of effective video analysis techniques presents a tedious challenge for researchers and has hindered ov...

Online Social Networks (OSNs), once regarded as safe havens for sharing information and providing mutual support among groups of people, have become breeding grounds for spreading toxic behaviors, political propaganda, and radicalizing content. Toxic individuals often hide under the auspices of anonymity to create fruitless arguments and divert the...

Many have noted the growing pervasiveness of transitional justice (TJ) norms in global politics. Yet, cyberspace has attracted little attention from scholars. Measuring justice demands and perceptions of ongoing processes is often difficult due to limited resources and security concerns. Social media data provide one alternative in such contexts. U...

This research introduces a systematic and multidisciplinary agent-based model to interpret and simplify the dynamic actions of the users and communities in an evolutionary online (offline) social network. The organizational cybernetics approach is used to control/monitor the malicious information spread between communities. The stochastic one-media...

With the power of social media being harnessed to coordinate events and revolutions across the globe, it is important to identify the key sets of individuals that have the power to mobilize crowds. These key sets have higher resources at their disposal and can regulate the flow of information in social networks. They can maximize information spread...

Analyzing topics of interest from online discourse can be challenging. One well-known approach is to conduct topic modeling to study the topics of interest. In this paper, we use a multi-method analytical framework to analyze topics in addition to characterizing their influence. We analyze 20,066 blog posts and 10,113 comments from July 2019 throug...

Recently, a growing collection of interdisciplinary literature has been suggesting that algorithmic bias in recommender systems may cause severe consequences for sociotechnical systems. Audits of multiple social media platforms documented the implicit bias in content, products, information, or connections recommended to users, sometimes based on ge...

In recent years, a growing number of journalistic and scholarly publications have paid particular attention to the broad societal impact of YouTube’s video recommendation system. Significantly, the YouTube algorithm’s alleged contributions to the formation of echo-chambers, filter-bubbles, polarization, radicalization, disinformation, and malicious...

Over the years, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., have become a valuable resource for marketing, public relations etc. One emerging mobile instant messaging medium, Telegram, has recently gained momentum in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. While most social media platforms have been s...

The use of social media has increased precipitously over the past few years. Despite the emergence of social networking services like Twitter and Facebook, blogging has, although slowly, continued to rise and provides an effective medium for spreading hoaxes and radicalizing content. Individuals also use blogs as a platform to mobilize, coordinate,...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling, SBP-BRiMS 2021, which was held online during July 6–9, 2021. The 32 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections as follows: COVID-re...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling, SBP-BRiMS 2020, which was planned to take place in Washington, DC, USA. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held online during October 18–21, 2020. The 33 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed a...

Social media is widely used to express views and share opinions with others. With the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools like social media, creating narratives, false information and propaganda is both convenient and effective. Social media users leverage this platform to further their views by framing narratives an...

YouTube is the second most popular website in the world. Over 500 hours of videos are uploaded every minute and 5 billion videos are watched every day – almost one video per person worldwide. Because videos can deliver a complex message in a way that captures the audience’s attention more effectively than text-based platforms, it has become one of...

Social media has grown to be the place for voicing one's opinions, sharing information, and shaping discourse. Individuals use social media as a platform to mobilize, coordinate, and conduct cyber campaigns ranging from awareness for diseases or disorders to deviant acts threatening democratic principles and institutions. Blogosphere has continued...

YouTube is the second most popular website in the world. Over 300 hours worth of videos are uploaded every minute and 5 billion videos are watched every day - almost one video per person worldwide. Because videos can deliver a complex message in a way that captures the audience’s attention more effectively than text-based platforms, it has become o...

Focal structure analysis explores the smallest possible sets of individuals can influence maximum number of users in social networks. These sets of individuals, when coordinating together, maximize information diffusing, influencing operations, or mobilizing crowds. Focal structure sets have enough resources at their disposal to regulate the flow o...

Online Social Networks (OSNs), once regarded as safe havens for sharing information and providing mutual support among groups of people, have become breeding grounds for spreading toxic behaviors, political propaganda, and radicalizing content. Toxic individuals often hide under the auspices of anonymity to create fruitless arguments and divert the...

Focal structures are the sets of individuals in social networks that are not influential on their own but are influential collectively. These individuals, when coordinating, can be responsible for massive information diffusion, influence operations, or could coordinate (cyber)-attacks. These communities have high tension than other communities in t...

In today’s information technology age, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens. Further, with the availability of inexpensive and ubiquitous mass communication tools like social media, disseminating false information and propaganda is both convenient and effective. Groups use social media to coordinate cyber propaganda ca...

The objective of this research is to continue our journey into determining whether the blogosphere, as a type of social media platform, can be used to disseminate information regarding the socio-political views and concerns of citizens within a specific community. We expand upon our example case of focusing on information relative to the Venezuelan...

The online video sharing website-YouTube, which was launched in February 2005 to help people share videos of well-known events, has rapidly grown to be a cultural phenomenon for its massive user-base. According to Alexa, the web traffic monitoring tool by Amazon, YouTube is the second most popular website globally. Still there is a lack of systemat...

Social media is widely used by individuals to express their views or opinions with others. Social media users leverage this platform to further their views by framing narratives and participating in online discourse. Nowadays almost all events, issues, and crises are discussed on social media. Blogs are not regulated by any authority and have no li...

The objective of this research is to determine whether the blogosphere, as a type of social media platform, can be used to disseminate information regarding the socio-political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As an example case, we focus on examining information relative to the Venezuelan community regarding the current Venezuela...

In today’s information technology age, our thinking and behaviors are highly influenced by what we see on our smartphones screens e.g. watching a fake or photo-shopped image of a well-known individual makes some of us think its true but in many cases, it is not. Misinformation is rampant. Complimented with the availability of inexpensive and ubiqui...

This is the extended abstract of the poster

Blogosphere has, although slowly after the advent of Twitter, continued to rise and provides a rich medium for content framing. With no restriction on the number of characters, many users use blogs to express their opinion and use other social media channels like Twitter and Facebook to steer their audience to their blogs. Blogs provide more conten...

In today’s information technology age, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens. Online Deviant Groups (ODGs) use social media to coordinate cyber propaganda campaigns to achieve strategic and political goals, influence mass thinking, and steering behaviors. In this research, we study the ODGs who conducted cyber propagand...

Social media has grown to be the place for voicing one’s opinions and share interests and information freely with others. Individuals use this as a platform to exchange thoughts with others on various activities ranging from coordinating cyber campaigns to bringing awareness for diseases or disorders by online health communities. Almost all events,...

From the terrorist attacks in Paris to the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, the Islamic State’s (known as ISIL or ISIS) dangerous influence is increasing and sadly threatening the life of many innocent people. ISIL’s digital influence in social media is extraordinary. In today’s interconnected world, terrorist groups and transnational c...