EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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1609. Mobs Simulation Guided by Social Science-Based Multi-Theoretical Framework

Invited abstract in session WD-7: Modelling social-behavioural phenomena in creative societies, stream Behavioural OR.

Wednesday, 14:30-16:00
Room: 1019 (building: 202)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Nitin Agarwal
COSMOS Research Center, UA Little Rock
2. Samer Al-khateeb
Department of Computer Science, Design and Journalism, Creighton University

Abstract

Social media sometimes empowers potential adversarial state actors, paid trolls, and extremists to incite hysteria and coordinate nefarious actions, e.g., deviant mobs. A mob is an event organized via social media or other forms of digital communication technologies in which a group of people gathers online and/or offline to conduct an act collectively and then disperses. To an outsider, such an event may seem arbitrary; however, a sophisticated amount of coordination is involved. These mob-like events like the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, or GameStop's stock “flashmob investing” are becoming widespread due to the affordability of social media, ease of use, effectiveness of individuals or groups in conducting coordinated acts, anonymity of the internet, etc. The prevalence of these incidents underscores the inadequacy of current systems (security, financial, etc.) in addressing such coordinated behavior. This topic is understudied due to lack of data, theoretical underpinning, and computational resources required to analyze the complex and dynamic social processes among mobbers. In this study, we develop a model that can simulate mobs guided by constructs extracted from various social science theories. We then aim to use the model to study the behavior of the mobbers, the motivation of the organizers, and attempt to infer the mob’s outcome. Real-world data, albeit limited, will be used to evaluate the simulation-driven model in a real-world setting.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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