"Cheats and gossips in cyber-social processes"
 

Computational social science emerged in the last decade as an interdisciplinary field that studies cyber-social processes from the digital crumbs left by Internet users interacting online. This lecture examines two such processes through the lens of network structures. The first, referred to as “cheats”, is rule-bending, such as cheating in video games or manipulation attempts via information operations in social media. The latter, referred to as “gossips”, is how information spreads online. 

Despite the appearance of big data, computational social science struggles with the lack of sufficient good data for reproducible and generalizable research. While the European Digital Services Act promises increased transparency in how social media platforms operate, it does not guarantee means to overcome the recent platform practices in guarding their data from researchers. This lecture will conclude with a discussion on the challenges of using large language models for generating synthetic social media datasets.

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