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This paper highlights the developing need for quantitative modes for capturing and monitoring malicious communication in social media. There has been a deliberate "weaponization" of messaging through the use of social networks including by politically oriented entities both state sponsored and privately run. The article identifies a use of AI/ML characterization of generalized "mal-info," a broad term which includes deliberate malicious narratives similar with hate speech, which adversely impact society. A key point of the discussion is that this mal-info will dramatically increase in volume, and it will become essential for sharable quantifying tools to provide support for human expert intervention. Despite attempts to introduce moderation on major platforms like Facebook and X/Twitter, there are now established alternative social networks that offer completely unmoderated spaces. The paper presents an introduction to these platforms and the initial results of a qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis of characteristic mal-info posts. The authors perform a rudimentary text mining function for a preliminary characterization in order to evaluate the modes for better-automated monitoring. The action examines several inflammatory terms using text analysis and, importantly, discusses the use of generative algorithms by one political agent in particular, providing some examples of the potential risks to society. This latter is of grave concern, and monitoring tools must be established. This paper presents a preliminary step to selecting relevant sources and to setting a foundation for characterizing the mal-info, which must be monitored. The AI/ML methods provide a means for semi-quantitative signature capture. The impending use of "mal-GenAI" is presented., Comment: Accepted at ICWSM-2024 Workshop on Digital State Sponsored Disinformation and Propaganda: Challenges and Opportunities (DSSDP24)

Social media platforms hold valuable insights, yet extracting essential information can be challenging. Traditional top-down approaches often struggle to capture critical signals in rapidly changing events. As global events evolve swiftly, social media narratives, including instances of disinformation, become significant sources of insights. To address the need for an inductive strategy, we explore a niche social media platform GAB and an established messaging service Telegram, to develop methodologies applicable on a broader scale. This study investigates narrative evolution on these platforms using quantitative corpus-based discourse analysis techniques. Our approach is a novel mode to study multiple social media domains to distil key information which may be obscured otherwise, allowing for useful and actionable insights. The paper details the technical and methodological aspects of gathering and preprocessing GAB and Telegram data for a keyness (Log Ratio) metric analysis, identifying crucial nouns and verbs for deeper exploration. Empirically, this approach is applied to a case study of a well defined event that had global impact: the 2023 Wagner mutiny. The main findings are: (1) the time line can be deconstructed to provide useful data features allowing for improved interpretation; (2) a methodology is applied which provides a basis for generalization. The key contribution is an approach, that in some cases, provides the ability to capture the dynamic narrative shifts over time with elevated confidence. The approach can augment near-real-time assessment of key social movements, allowing for informed governance choices. This research is important because it lays out a useful methodology for time series relevant info-culling, which can enable proactive modes for positive social engagement., Comment: AAAI2024 Workshop on AI for Time Series Analysis (AI4TS)

The growing popularity of generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, has sparked both enthusiasm and caution among practitioners and researchers in education. To effectively harness the full potential of ChatGPT in educational contexts, it is crucial to analyze its impact and suitability for different educational purposes. This paper takes an initial step in exploring the applicability of ChatGPT in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. Using statistical analysis, we validate the shifts in student interactions during an asynchronous group brainstorming session by introducing ChatGPT as an instantaneous question-answering agent., Comment: AAAI2024 Workshop on AI for Education (AI4ED)