Thursday, November 14, 2024, 10am

This thesis takes a comprehensive network discovery and computational approach to understanding state-sponsored operations on social media. The focus is on mapping out China’s public diplomacy and covert information operations to find key players, algorithmic tactics, and the role of bots and influencers in amplifying messaging. A core component of my research focuses on narrative shifts within these campaigns in response to global events, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. By temporally analyzing transformer-based embeddings, I map out how China’s narratives towards regional neighbors have shifted, particularly regarding its territorial claims around Taiwan and the South China Sea. I then analyze the relationship between social media and kinetic offline activity, analyzing China’s military flights around Taiwan and its social media messaging around the 2022 Nancy Pelosi visit. The culmination of my research contributes to constructing a scenario design for synthetic social media campaigns within a digital training environment, aimed at understanding state actor behavior in manipulating public opinion and policy. Lastly, I discuss policy implications and the impact of state-sponsored activity in a climate of declining platform moderation. My work advances the understanding of how state actors leverage and manipulate the information environment through diverse information maneuvers to further strategic objectives, providing a comprehensive view of the complex landscape of state-sponsored operations on social media.

Thesis Committee
Kathleen M. Carley (Chair)
Patrick Park
John Chin
Col. Matthew Benigni (US Army)

Additional Information

In Person and Zoom Participation. See announcement.

Event Type: Thesis Orals
Room Number: In Person and Virtual - ET
Building: TCS Hall 360 and Zoom
Speaker's Name: CHARITY S. JACOBS
Speaker Website: charityking2358.github.io
Speaker's Professional Title: Ph.D. Candidate, Ph.D. Program in Societal Computing, Software and Societal Systems Department, Carnegie Mellon University
Talk Title: Characterizing State-Sponsored Information Campaigns through Network Discovery
Event Poster Title: Poster
Event Poster URL: www.cs.cmu.edu…
For More Information: aroudebu@andrew.cmu.edu
Affiliations: Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D)
Organization(s): School of Computer Science