| In today's information technology age our thinking and behaviors are highly influenced by what we see on the Internet and our smartphones screens, e.g., watching a fake or photo-shopped image of a well-known individual makes some of us think it is true. But in many cases, it is not. The initial use of social media for benign purposes, e.g., to socialize with friends or browse pictures has increasingly transitioned to include malicious activities, e.g., cyber-terrorism and cyber-warfare. These nefarious uses of Online Social Networks (OSNs) pose a significant threat to society and are under-studied, thus requires research attention. Online Deviant Groups (ODGs) including state and non-state actors, e.g., the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), anti-NATO propagandist, or deviant hackers' groups are using social media to influence mass thinking; invite citizens to participate in hacking activities or Deviant Cyber Flash Mobs (DCFMs); and try to provoke hysteria among citizens by disseminating mis/disinformation or propaganda about various important events. This research studies ODGs from a computational social science perspective and provide suitable mathematical models to understand ODGs' coordination strategies, motivations, and uncover hidden relations between different entities, e.g., individuals, organizations, and groups. It consists of three main streams, i.e., ODGs acts, e.g., DCFMs and mis/disinformation cyber campaigns; ODGs tactics and channels, e.g., Bots and Internet trolls on Twitter and blogs; and Social Cyber Forensics (SCF) tools and techniques to enhance the collected raw data and to uncover hidden relationships between different ODGs. This interdisciplinary research shed light on the emerging sociotechnical behaviors conducted by ODGs, highlight the risks they pose to human security, and advance our understanding of such behaviors by bridging forensics, social, and computational sciences. It should help researchers in the fields of Technology Law, Social Sciences, Security and Defense, Information Warfare, Forensic Science, Communication, Information Technology, and Computer Science. It should also help in developing effective proactive measures and policies to eliminate the security risks in both cyberspace and physical space, i.e., Cybernetic Space. |
