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Battling the Internet water army: Detection of hidden paid posters

Cheng Chen, Kui Wu, Venkatesh Srinivasan, Xudong Zhang

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)peer-review

Abstract

We initiate a systematic study to help distinguish a special group of online users, called hidden paid posters, or termed "Internet water army" in China, from the legitimate ones. On the Internet, the paid posters represent a new type of online job opportunities. They get paid for posting comments or articles on different online communities and websites for hidden purposes, e.g., to influence the opinion of other people towards certain social events or business markets. While being an interesting strategy in business marketing, paid posters may create a significant negative effect on the online communities, since the information from paid posters is usually not trustworthy. When two competitive companies hire paid posters to post fake news or negative comments about each other, normal netizens may feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to put any trust in the information they acquire from the Internet. In this paper, we thoroughly investigate the behavioral pattern of online paid posters based on real-world trace data. We design and validate a new detection mechanism, using both non-semantic analysis and semantic analysis, to identify potential online paid posters. Our test results with real-world datasets show a very promising performance. Copyright 2013 ACM.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2013
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages116-120
ISBN (Print)9781450322409
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes
Event2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2013 - Niagara Falls, ON, Canada
Duration: 25 Aug 201328 Aug 2013

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2013

Conference

Conference2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2013
PlaceCanada
CityNiagara Falls, ON
Period25/08/1328/08/13

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