[论文解读] Who Let The Trolls Out? Towards Understanding State-Sponsored Trolls

Savvas Zannettou, Tristan Caulfield+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Nov 7, 2018

Misinformation and Its Impacts参考文献 30被引用 46

一句话总结

该论文分析 10 million posts from Russian and Iranian state-sponsored trolls on Twitter and Reddit, 考察它们的行为、活动、语言、时机，以及在Twitter、Reddit、4chan和Gab上的影响，使用 Hawkes Processes 和 word embeddings。

ABSTRACT

Over the past few years, extensive anecdotal evidence emerged that suggests the involvement of state-sponsored actors (or “trolls”) in online political campaigns with the goal to manipulate public opinion and sow discord. Recently, Twitter and Reddit released ground truth data about Russian and Iranian state-sponsored actors that were active on their platforms. In this paper, we analyze these ground truth datasets across several axes to understand how these actors operate, how they evolve over time, who are their targets, how their strategies changed over time, and what is their influence to the Web’s information ecosystem. Among other things we find: a) campaigns of these actors were influenced by real-world events; b) these actors were employing different tactics and had different targets over time, thus their automated detection is not straightforward; and c) Russian trolls were clearly pro-Trump, whereas Iranian trolls were anti-Trump. Finally, using Hawkes Processes, we quantified the influence that these actors had to four Web communities: Reddit, Twitter, 4chan’s Politically Incorrect board (/pol/), and Gab, finding that Russian trolls were more influential than Iranians with the exception of /pol/

研究动机与目标

• 表征来自 Twitter 与 Reddit 的真实状态资助水军账户（俄罗斯与伊朗）。
• 检查水军活动如何随时间演变并对现实世界事件作出回应。
• 使用统计建模量化这些水军对多个网络社区的影响。

提出的方法

• 使用 Hawkes Processes 对水军账户在 Twitter、Reddit、4chan (/pol/) 和 Gab 上的 URL 传播影响进行建模。
• 应用词向量（word2vec）来识别语言和内容中的意识形态和情境差异。
• 分析账号创建时间、个人资料描述、关注者/朋友分布，以及语言/客户端使用情况，以了解人物形象和活动策略。
• 对比俄罗斯和伊朗水军在不同平台、语言和时间上的行为差异。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 在时间和平台上，俄罗斯和伊朗的国家支持水军行动有何不同？
• RQ2 哪些内容与语言模式可区分俄罗斯水军与伊朗水军的活动？
• RQ3 现实世界事件在多大的程度上影响这些国家支持水军的行动？
• RQ4 这些水军在跨越 Twitter、Reddit、4chan 和 Gab 的内容传播中有多大影响？

主要发现

• 俄罗斯水军在Twitter上传播URL方面高度有影响力且效率更高，在Reddit和Gab上也比伊朗水军更具影响力，除了/pol/ 上伊朗人更具影响力。
• 词嵌入揭示意识形态差异：俄罗斯水军倾向于亲特朗普，而伊朗水军则反特朗普。
• 伊朗的行动与现实世界事件呈现一致性（如法国和沙特阿拉伯事件），表明其受事件驱动。
• 水军行为随时间变化，包括语言使用与 Twitter 客户端选择的转变，表明行动策略在演变。
• 水军话题和讨论因平台而异（例如，俄罗斯水军在 Reddit 上比在 Twitter 上更加强调加密货币）。
• 该研究公开发布数据和代码，以支持可重复性和进一步研究。