Low quality information such as spam and rumors is a nuisance to people and hinders them from consuming information that is pertinent to them or that they are looking for. As social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have become important communication platforms in people's daily lives, malicious users make them as major targets to pollute with low quality information, which we also call as Denial of Information (DoI) attacks. How to analyze and detect low quality information in social networks for preventing DoI attacks is the major research problem I will address in this dissertation. Although individual social networks are capable of filtering a significant amount of low quality information they receive, they usually require large amounts of resources (e.g, personnel) and incur a delay before detecting new types of low quality information. Also the evolution of various low quality information posts lots of challenges to defensive techniques. My work contains three major parts: 1). analytics and detection framework of low quality information, 2). evolutionary study of low quality information, and 3). detection approaches of low quality information. In part I, I proposed social spam analytics and detection framework SPADE across multiple social networks showing the efficiency and flexibility of cross-domain classification and associative classification. In part II, I performed a large-scale evolutionary study on web page spam and email spam over a long period of time. In part III, I designed three detection approaches used in detecting low quality information in social networks: click traffic analysis of short URL spam, behavior analysis of URL spam and information diffusion analysis of rumors in social networks. Our study shows promising results in analyzing and detecting low quality information in social networks.

This Thesis expands on the current developments of the theory of stochastic diffusion processes of rumours. This is done by advancing the current mathematical characterisation of the solution to the Daley-Kendall model of the simple S-I-R rumour to a physical solution of the sub-population distribution over time of the generalised simple stochastic spreading process in social situations. After discussing stochastic spreading processes in social situations such as the simple epidemic, the simple rumour, the spread of innovations and ad hoc communications networks, it uses the three sub-population simple rumour to develop the theory for the identification of the exact sub-population distribution over time. This is done by identifying the generalised form of the Laplace Transform Characterisation of the solution to the three sub-population single rumour process and the inverse Laplace Transform of this characterisation. In this discussion the concept of the Inter-Changeability Principle is introduced. The general theory is validated for the three population Daley-Kendall Rumour Model and results for the three, five and seven population Daley-Kendall Rumour Models are pre- sented and discussed. The α - p model results for pseudo-Maki-Thompson Models are presented and discussed. In subsequent discussion it presents for the first time a statement of the Threshold Problem for Stochastic Spreading Processes in Social settings as well as stating the associated Threshold Theorem. It also investigates limiting conditions. Aspects of future research resulting from the extension of the three subpopulation model to more than three subpopulations are discussed at the end of the thesis. The computational demands of applying the theory to more than three subpopulations are restrictive; the size of the total population that can be considered at one time is considerably reduced. To retain the ability to compute a large population size, with an increase in the number of possible subpopulations, a possible method of repeated application of the three population solution is identified. This is done through the medium of two competing mutually exclusive rumours. The final discussion occurs on future investigation into the existence of limit values, zero states, cyclic states and absorbing states for the M subpopulation case. The generalisation and inversion of the Laplace Transform as well as the consequential statement of the threshold theorem, derivation of the transition probabilities and discussion of the limiting conditions are significant advances in the theory of rumours and similar social phenomena. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mathematical Sciences, 2008

No Chile, país de terremotos, a surpresa foi total quando multitudinários saques a estabelecimentos comerciais começaram logo depois do megassismo que atingiu, na madrugada de sábado 27 de fevereiro de 2010, Concepción, a terceira maior área metropolitana do país. Organizaram-se nos bairros estratégias de autodefesa por temor aos rumores sobre a chegada de saqueadores. Para se restabelecer a ordem social, foi decretado Estado de Exceção. Este estudo exploratório e qualitativo busca enxergar a relação entre terremoto, violência coletiva e insegurança urbana com base nos depoimentos de homens e mulheres que entrevistamos em Concepción dois anos depois do cataclismo. Inspirados no debate teórico sobre a memória coletiva, analisaremos os silêncios e olvidos que fazem parte dos testemunhos; assim, iremos interrogar o caráter inédito que os entrevistados, mas também acadêmicos e autoridades, outorgaram aos saques pós-terremoto, que, como iremos ver, foram interpretados como sintoma do deterioramento moral da sociedade chilena sob o regime neoliberal. Por intermédio de diferentes registros do passado, buscaremos rastros sobre conflitos sociais e políticos em outros momentos da história telúrica nacional. Sobre os episódios de 2010 em específico, e seguindo os trabalhos de Charles Tilly e Javier Auyero, apresentamos numa escala microespacial alvos, dinâmicas e repertórios dos saques conforme as rememorações dos consultados, entre eles, donos de lojas vitimizados pela multidão. Por fim, para indagar o deslocamento do medo do terremoto ao medo dos outros, chamaremos a atenção sobre os modos pelos quais são representados diferentes bairros da cidade e o papel dos rumores. / Chileans, a population used to earthquakes, woke up with surprise in the morning of February 27th, 2010 since right after the earthquake that hit Concepción, the third largest metropolitan area in the country, massive looting to stores came about. Fed by rumors about roving mobs, Concepcion residents formed their own neighborhood defense squads to guard their homes, whereas the Chilean government declared State of Exception to restore the social order. Drawing on testimonies of men and women I interviewed in Concepción two years after the disaster, this exploratory and qualitative research examines the relationship between earthquake, collective violence, and urban insecurity. Following a theoretical discussion about collective memories, I explore how silence and forgetting are active elements in the process of collective remembering. In addition, this project analyzes the sense of exceptionality that my interviewees, other scholars, and state authorities have assigned to looting in the aftermath of the earthquake; events that, as I shall demonstrate, were interpreted as a symptom of moral decadence of Chilean society under the neoliberal regime. By scrutinizing historical data about past earthquakes, I look at traces of social and political conflicts associated with the occurrence of natural disaster like the one I describe here. Concerning the 2010 facts, I make use of the framework offered by Charles Tilly and Javier Auyero to present, at a micro-scale level, looting targets, dynamics and repertoires based on narratives collected empirically (among them, testimonies of storeowners who were victimized by the crowd). Finally, to explore the displacement of fearin particular, from the fear to earthquake to the fear of the othersI point out the need to pay attention to the ways in which different neighborhoods are conceived of as well as the role of rumors.

No Chile, país de terremotos, a surpresa foi total quando multitudinários saques a estabelecimentos comerciais começaram logo depois do megassismo que atingiu, na madrugada de sábado 27 de fevereiro de 2010, Concepción, a terceira maior área metropolitana do país. Organizaram-se nos bairros estratégias de autodefesa por temor aos rumores sobre a chegada de saqueadores. Para se restabelecer a ordem social, foi decretado Estado de Exceção. Este estudo exploratório e qualitativo busca enxergar a relação entre terremoto, violência coletiva e insegurança urbana com base nos depoimentos de homens e mulheres que entrevistamos em Concepción dois anos depois do cataclismo. Inspirados no debate teórico sobre a memória coletiva, analisaremos os silêncios e olvidos que fazem parte dos testemunhos; assim, iremos interrogar o caráter inédito que os entrevistados, mas também acadêmicos e autoridades, outorgaram aos saques pós-terremoto, que, como iremos ver, foram interpretados como sintoma do deterioramento moral da sociedade chilena sob o regime neoliberal. Por intermédio de diferentes registros do passado, buscaremos rastros sobre conflitos sociais e políticos em outros momentos da história telúrica nacional. Sobre os episódios de 2010 em específico, e seguindo os trabalhos de Charles Tilly e Javier Auyero, apresentamos numa escala microespacial alvos, dinâmicas e repertórios dos saques conforme as rememorações dos consultados, entre eles, donos de lojas vitimizados pela multidão. Por fim, para indagar o deslocamento do medo do terremoto ao medo dos outros, chamaremos a atenção sobre os modos pelos quais são representados diferentes bairros da cidade e o papel dos rumores. / Chileans, a population used to earthquakes, woke up with surprise in the morning of February 27th, 2010 since right after the earthquake that hit Concepción, the third largest metropolitan area in the country, massive looting to stores came about. Fed by rumors about roving mobs, Concepcion residents formed their own neighborhood defense squads to guard their homes, whereas the Chilean government declared State of Exception to restore the social order. Drawing on testimonies of men and women I interviewed in Concepción two years after the disaster, this exploratory and qualitative research examines the relationship between earthquake, collective violence, and urban insecurity. Following a theoretical discussion about collective memories, I explore how silence and forgetting are active elements in the process of collective remembering. In addition, this project analyzes the sense of exceptionality that my interviewees, other scholars, and state authorities have assigned to looting in the aftermath of the earthquake; events that, as I shall demonstrate, were interpreted as a symptom of moral decadence of Chilean society under the neoliberal regime. By scrutinizing historical data about past earthquakes, I look at traces of social and political conflicts associated with the occurrence of natural disaster like the one I describe here. Concerning the 2010 facts, I make use of the framework offered by Charles Tilly and Javier Auyero to present, at a micro-scale level, looting targets, dynamics and repertoires based on narratives collected empirically (among them, testimonies of storeowners who were victimized by the crowd). Finally, to explore the displacement of fearin particular, from the fear to earthquake to the fear of the othersI point out the need to pay attention to the ways in which different neighborhoods are conceived of as well as the role of rumors.

The main title of the doctoral thesis - ART/CRIME - CRIME/ART - point to a general investigation of these two phenomenons. This investigation makes up the background of the main theme of the thesis, which is an actual event of the mysterious death of the painter and shepherd K.. At work I spend time with alternative investigations of this death and the goal is an attempt to reconstruct the events and effort of discovering the answers what happened that night and whether or not a killer really existed or not.

Orientador: Francisco Benjamin de Souza Netto / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T04:42:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gonzaga_SolangeMariaNorjosa_D.pdf: 1654797 bytes, checksum: 8d8393033146423ad9a9e3522135c6b6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: A pesquisa demonstra que Platão, no diálogo Leis, possibilita a efetivação da arte política por meio do cuidado da alma em sua natureza e disposição (I, 650b). A reflexão sobre a disposição da alma dar-se via mito da marionete, em que Platão descreve a guerra no interior do homem; mostra como lidar com a tensão entre o vício e a virtude provocada pelo prazer e dor; e postula axiomas determinando a natureza das relações amorosas e o cuidado que se deve ter com as afecções da alma. Platão elabora nas Leis uma Constituição a partir da problematização de três questões: o simpósio, a sissítia para as mulheres e a procriação, que propicia instituir um novo éthos que fará do cidadão da pólis onde será fundada em Creta, uma marionete a serviço das divindades (I, 645b). Assim, realizamos em nossa tese uma reflexão no âmbito da filosofia platônica sobre a tripla relação entre o homem, a divindade e a lei, enquanto possibilidade de realização da arte política / Abstract: This research shows that Plato, in the Laws dialogue, enables the operation of political art through the care for the soul in its nature and disposition (I, 650b). A reflection on the disposition of the soul occurs by means of the puppet myth, in which Plato describes the war inside man, showing how to deal with the tension between vice and virtue caused by pleasure and pain; and postulates axioms determining the nature of love relations and the care we must have with the soul's affections. Plato elaborates in Laws a Constitution stemming from three questions: the symposium, the sissitia for women and procreation, which provides the institution of a new ethos which will turn the citizen of the Cretian polis into a puppet to the service of the divinities (I, 645b). Thus, in our thesis, we reflect, in the scope of platonic philosophy, on the triple relation of man, the divinity and the law, while there is the possibility of realizing the political art / Doutorado / Doutor em Filosofia

This thesis is concerned with studying the behavior of a gossiping protocol in the specific sense meant by Ericsson; in the following pages I’ll introduce a Markov process which models the spread of information in such systems. The results will be verified by means of a discreet-event simulation. / Gossiping Protocols, are inherently random in behavior.Nonetheless, they are not structure-less. Their asymptotic behavior when implemented in large scales is the matter of focus in this thesis. / Tel: +46709700505 Address: Pinnharvsgatan 3 E lgh 1202 43147 Mölndal Sweden

Våren 2017 upplevde Sverige en kris när det terrorattentat med flest dödsfall sen 1940 inträffade; en lastbil körde längs Drottninggatan i Stockholm, varpå flera personer blev påkörda varav fem personer dödades. Händelsen spred sig snabbt i sociala medier och delar av informationen som spreds var obekräftade uppgifter som senare visade sig vara felaktiga. Syftet med denna studie har varit att framställa rekommendationer för kriskommunikatörers proaktiva arbete mot falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier samt utgöra en grund för vidare forskning inom krisinformatik. För att uppnå detta syfte har sex respondenter från Krisinformation.se och Polisen intervjuats och en tidslinje (Bilaga 3) upprättats för att förtydliga händelseförloppet på sociala medier under terrorattentatet. Analys av data från det insamlade materialet har resulterat i tio rekommendationer som kan appliceras för att proaktivt motverka falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier. Rekommendationer som kan appliceras generellt hos aktörer inom krishantering. Dessa rekommendationer var: Öva; Bevaka; Skapa material; Var snabb; Var korrekt; Var närvarande; Bemöt rykten; Var tillgänglig; Utbilda; Crowdsourca. / In the spring of 2017, Sweden experienced a crisis when the most deadly act of terrorism since 1940 occured; a truck drove through a crowd of people on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, hitting several people and killing five. The event spread rapidly in social media and the circulating information was in part unconfirmed data that later turned out to be incorrect. The purpose of this study was to generate recommendations regarding emergency communicators’ proactive work against false information and the spreading of rumors on social media, while at the same time be a foundation for future studies within crisis informatics. To achieve this purpose six respondents from Krisinformation.se and the Swedish police were interviewed and a timeline (Bilaga 3) was created in order to clarify the chain of events on social media during the act of terrorism. Analysis of data from the aggregated material has resulted in ten recommended measures applicable to proactive work against false information and spreading of rumors in social media. Measures that can be applied generally to actors within crisis management. These measures were: Practice; Monitor; Create material; Be quick, Be correct; Be present; Respond to rumors; Be available; Educate; Crowdsource.

Våren 2017 upplevde Sverige en kris när det terrorattentat med flest dödsfall sen 1940 inträffade; en lastbil körde längs Drottninggatan i Stockholm, varpå flera personer blev påkörda varav fem personer dödades. Händelsen spred sig snabbt i sociala medier och delar av informationen som spreds var obekräftade uppgifter som senare visade sig vara felaktiga. Syftet med denna studie har varit att framställa rekommendationer för kriskommunikatörers proaktiva arbete mot falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier samt utgöra en grund för vidare forskning inom krisinformatik. För att uppnå detta syfte har sex respondenter från Krisinformation.se och Polisen intervjuats och en tidslinje (Bilaga 3) upprättats för att förtydliga händelseförloppet på sociala medier under terrorattentatet. Analys av data från det insamlade materialet har resulterat i tio rekommendationer som kan appliceras för att proaktivt motverka falsk information och ryktesspridning på sociala medier. Rekommendationer som kan appliceras generellt hos aktörer inom krishantering. Dessa rekommendationer var: Öva; Bevaka; Skapa material; Var snabb; Var korrekt; Var närvarande; Bemöt rykten; Var tillgänglig; Utbilda; Crowdsourca. / In the spring of 2017, Sweden experienced a crisis when the most deadly act of terrorism since 1940 occured; a truck drove through a crowd of people on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, hitting several people and killing five. The event spread rapidly in social media and the circulating information was in part unconfirmed data that later turned out to be incorrect. The purpose of this study was to generate recommendations regarding emergency communicators’ proactive work against false information and the spreading of rumors on social media, while at the same time be a foundation for future studies within crisis informatics. To achieve this purpose six respondents from Krisinformation.se and the Swedish police were interviewed and a timeline (Bilaga 3) was created in order to clarify the chain of events on social media during the act of terrorism. Analysis of data from the aggregated material has resulted in ten recommended measures applicable to proactive work against false information and spreading of rumors in social media. Measures that can be applied generally to actors within crisis management. These measures were: Practice; Monitor; Create material; Be quick, Be correct; Be present; Respond to rumors; Be available; Educate; Crowdsource.

Alors même que la France et la Grande-Bretagne s’apprêtent à déclarer la guerre à l’Allemagne, plus d’un million de personnes sont évacuées de la frontière franco-allemande. Encadrés de part et d’autre de la frontière par les autorités civiles et militaires, les Alsaciens, Lorrains, Badois et Sarrois, vivant entre les lignes défensives (ligne Maginot, Ligne Siegfried) et la frontière, sont transportés vers l’intérieur de leur pays respectifs. Ces mesures d’évacuation du début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale constituent pour les deux sociétés, après la mobilisation des hommes en âge de se battre, la seconde grande mesure de guerre faisant passer ces deux sociétés civiles à l’état de sociétés en guerre. Cette transformation a non seulement des conséquences au niveau social, politique et économique, mais également des effets au niveau communicationnel, ce qui constitue l’objet de cette thèse. Il s’agit, à travers le phénomène de l’évacuation, de faire ressortir les mécanismes de communication des États au niveau de leur propagande nationale, de faire apparaître les interactions et méthodes de communication entre les autorités locales et les évacués et enfin d’éclairer les systèmes de communication au sein des groupes des évacués à travers l’analyse des rumeurs de pillages des zones évacuées. Cette approche permet de retracer une histoire de la communication dans les sociétés en guerre française et allemande dans laquelle fusionnent les perspectives ascendante et descendante mais également comparative et transnationale. Ainsi, la communication des sociétés en guerre apparaît comme le fruit de négociations et d’interactions en constante évolution entre acteurs aux intérêts différents. De cette étude ressortent également les limites d’influence des deux États au sein de leur population, qu’il s’agisse d’un État républicain démocratique telle la Troisième République ou bien d’un État dictatorial aux ambitions totalitaires comme le fût le « Troisième Reich ». / While France and Great-Britain were about to declare war on Germany, more than one million persons were evacuated from the Franco-German Border. Led on both side of the border by civilian and military authorities, the Alsatians, Lorrainers, Badners and Saarlanders living between the defence lines (Maginot-Line, Siegfried Line) were transported inside their own country. These evacuations measures formed – after the mobilization on the front of the men in-age to fight – the second important measure of war, which turned these civil societies into war societies. This transformation has not only consequences on political, economic and social level, but also on communication, which is the topic of this doctoral thesis. The evacuations phenomena allow us to shed light on state propaganda on a national and international level, to reveal the communication methods and interactions between the local authorities and the evacuees and finally to show the communications systems within groups of evacuees by analysing rumours on pillages of the evacuated region. This approach highlights a history of communication in both French and German war society based on top-down and bottom-up perspectives and on comparative and transnational analyses. Communication in war society appears as the fruit of negotiations and interactions in constant evolution between agents with different interests. This study emphasized the limits of the state’s influence over the population, both in a republican democratic state as the French Third Republic and in a dictatorial state with totalitarian ambitions such as the “Third Reich”.