Deep Agent: Computational Social Science Centered Simulation of Online Information Environments

Ivan Garibay, Madeline Schiappa, Georgios C. Anagnostopoulos, Christina Bouwens, Stephen M. Fiore, Heather Keathley, Alexander Mantzaris, John T. Murphy, William Rand, Anastasia Salter, Mel Stanfill, Gita Sukthankar, Nisha Baral, Anamaria Berea, Chathika Gunaratne, Neda B. Hajiakhoond, Gabriel Fair, Jasser Jasser, Chathura Jayalath, Ece Mutlu, Olivia B. Newton, Amirarsalan Rajabi, Samaneh Saadat, Steve R. Scheinert, Chathurani Senevirathna, Rachel Winter, Xi Zhang
July 2019
PDF Cite Project

Abstract

This paper explains the design of a social network analysis framework, developed under DARPA’s SocialSim program, with novel architecture that models human emotional, cognitive and social factors. Our framework is both theory and data-driven, and utilizes domain expertise. Our simulation effort helps understanding how information flows and evolves in social media platforms. We focused on modeling three information domains: cryptocurrencies, cyber threats, and software vulnerabilities for the three interrelated social environments: GitHub, Reddit, and Twitter. We participated in the SocialSim DARPA Challenge in December 2018, in which our models were subjected to an extensive performance evaluation for accuracy, generalizability, explainability, and experimental power. This paper reports the main concepts and models, utilized in our social media modeling effort in developing a multi-resolution simulation at the user, community, population, and content levels.

Publication
5th International Conference on Computational Social Science
Georgios C. Anagnostopoulos
Georgios C. Anagnostopoulos
Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering

I lead the Machine Learning Research Group at FIT.

Xi Zhang
Xi Zhang
Senior Doctoral Student of Electrical Engineering

My research interests include point process analysis, modeling and optimization.