Graph Visualizes Thousands of Tweets about Apple and #NoBackDoor

Information about the visualization as well as a link to it can be viewed in this blog entry: http://goo.gl/TnhKbK.

The visualization maps individual tweets and allows users to click to see what the tweet said and where it was retweeted. It also shows how a tweet traveled and how the users are connected. The graph is updated automatically every hour.

This collaborative effort comprised teams of information science researchers at UALR and the UNH Cyber Forensics Research and Education Group (UNHcFREG). The UALR team included the doctoral student Samer Al-khateeb and Nitin Agarwal, the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair Professor of Information Science. The University of New Haven team consisted of Ibrahim Baggili, the Elder Family Endowed Chair and co-director of UNHcFREG, and Frank Breitinger, co-director of UNHcFREG.

Al-khateeb worked intensively to collect, visualize, and analyze the data.

"The most interesting finding perhaps (based on the data we collected at the time of writing) is that most people are siding with Tim Cook," he said, "where he also seems to be the biggest influencer in the network so far. Other plausible inferences may be drawn, but the reason the visualization was created is so people will draw their own conclusions.  We wanted to  help individuals make sense out of this situation."

The graph, which is a giant circle, allows users to double click on dots and see the number of tweets the individual made and what the tweets said. It also allows the user to see all of the connected points for a tweet and a retweet. Tweets are public and can be tracked. The chart illustrates tweets from Apple CEO Tim Cook, other "influencers" and everyone else who tweeted and retweeted about the issue.

Today, the graph has started to include comments (mostly from Germany) mentioning Bill Gates  and his stance on the issue.

"This graph documents how people are communicating with each other about the topic," Baggili said. "We did this because we wanted to make it easy for people to navigate through opinions on this important, timely topic."

The visualization depicts the usage of the hashtag #nobackdoor by the Twitter community.

"This visualization helps us track the discussions and debates going on and further helps us understand how these debates shape public opinions around such issues of vital importance to the society."  Agarwal said.

Baggili and Breitinger, co-directors of UNHcFREG, are collaborating with the UALR Information Science team to combine cyber forensics techniques developed at UNH with social network analysis techniques developed at UALR.

At UALR, Al-khateeb works with Agarwal, on his U.S. Office of Naval Research-funded projects, where they are analyzing the role of social media in propaganda dissemination in conflict-riddled regions of the world (including members of ISIS, Russia and Western Europe).

Working closely with defense analysts and NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM CoE), they study deviant behaviors in the cyber world from a computational and sociological standpoint and focus on those who use cyber networks to promote terrorism, influence mass opinions, and spread propaganda.

UNHcFREG studies ways to track and extract digital evidence on criminals through digital evidence extracted from computers, phones, programs, applications, clouds and networks and is building the digital forensics Artifact Genome Project (AGP). UNHcFREG research in the past demonstrated security weaknesses in mobile social-messaging applications that affect more than one billion people worldwide.

"Together, we can bridge the gap between cyber security, and cyber forensics and leverage social network analysis to catch criminals," Baggili said.

Agarwal added "existing approaches to cyber-threat assessment and mitigation strategies overlook the societal aspect, which warrants the need for novel socio-computational methods. Toward this direction "we intend to create an interdisciplinary collaboratarium bringing researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, including information science, social science, security and digital forensics, political science, economics, among others to counter cyber-threats in an emerging socio-technical context; mobilize the research community to spark innovation; and shape the future forward research agenda in the security and privacy of digital communications tools, social media, and society."

About the University of New Haven

The University of New Haven is a private, top-tier comprehensive institution recognized as a national leader in experiential education. Founded in 1920 the university enrolls approximately 1,800 graduate students and more than 4,600 undergraduates.