Behind the Mask: A Taxonomic Analysis of Activities in Online Social Networks
For researchers and practitioners in HCI and social media analysis, this taxonomy provides a structured framework to analyze malicious actors, though it is an incremental contribution.
The paper develops a taxonomy to characterize malicious actors and their activities in online social networks, applied to anti-migration discourse, aiming to aid in identifying disinformation spreaders.
The broadcast of disinformation in online social networks (OSN) is a growing concern examined across several disciplines, including human-computer interaction (HCI). The pervasive issue has been prompting novel approaches to identify the malicious actors behind the dissemination of deceptive and fabricated content. Analyzing the characteristics and activities of these actors, we designed a taxonomy informed by collaboration with subject matter experts (SMEs) and a review of the academic literature. Our study explores how to distinguish the characteristics, activities, and strategies of malicious actors on OSN and examines how they contribute to the spread of disinformation. We describe the design process and the application of the taxonomy in a case study analyzing anti-migration discourse in social media channels, and reflect on its potential to aid researchers and practitioners in the responsible design of network systems.