Paper: S. Kumar, J. Cheng, J. Leskovec, and V. S. Subrahmanian, “An Army of Me: Sockpuppets in Online Discussion Communities,” 2017.
Summary: The online activity analysis of “a user account that is controlled by an individual (or puppetmaster) who controls at least one other user account.” is the goal of the paper. In it, the authors identify, characterize and predict the behavior of sockpuppetry. The adopted definition of sockpuppets is different from the one understood at the mention of the word. The focus on whether a pair of accounts is sockpuppets is methodically established by:
- First, identifying them using IP address, the time signature of the comments and the discussions posted in. This was limited to the discussions with at least 3 recurring posts.
- Second, characterizing them using the hypothesis testing method to infer that the sockpuppets do not lead double lives. The linguistic traits helped differentiate them from normal users by showing that they use mostly first- and second-person singular personal pronouns. The activity analysis of these sockpuppets resulted in the conclusions that they start fewer discussions, participate in controversial topics, are treated harshly by the community and they have a lot of mutual interaction.
Reflections: The past few readings have been probing similar areas of social computing platforms. It has been trying to answer a security-based question where ideally all platforms will want to know the origins of each user, their behavior pattern and predict future use patterns. Now, this paper essentially is introducing another possible concern in the same area. While a lot of research (which is becoming more and more apparent with the readings) is addressing the problem from a statistical standpoint the question that popped to my head is can this be viewed from another viewpoint. Maybe we need to wear a different hat to get some new information. The solution was that of my home base of Human Factors. I wish to give three possible viewpoints that a combination of Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction advocate for:
- Ontology: This is a generalized map of the behavior patterns one would display if one had a set of traits. In the case of sockpuppeteers, this would essentially mean that we generalize them into categories and learn their behavior model to predict the behavior of future sockpuppeteers. This could help in the automated filtering of fake accounts, probing into non-human sockpuppets that help spread misinformation, etc. For this first, we will need to build a Persona of the common sockpuppeteer and then draw conclusions based on that.
- Work Domain Analysis: Now the social computing platform can be considered as a work domain with the task being to post information. Since there is no Normative, or “One best way”, to analyze it we can take a “Formative” approach similar to Kim J. Vicente in his book on Cognitive Work Analysis. This could help us understand the different strategies the sockpuppeteers could use, the social organization and cooperation they have as well as their competencies.
- Social Network Theory: The use of social network theory can help identify the string of sockpuppets that a user could potentially be using. This could prove to be a useful tool to find the root of a group of accounts. This could also help understand the interaction patterns of these accounts giving valuable insight to build the behavioral model of such individuals.
Another area where I have a few burning questions after reading this paper, which I am hoping to get some insight into is trolling.
- Who is a troll?
- How is a troll different from a sockpuppet?
- Can one become the other?
- Do they ever interact?
- What is their relationship?
I am hoping to get a better understanding with more reading on the same topic. I think it will be interesting to study the above mentioned interaction.
