Social cybersecurity: an emerging science
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Social cybersecurity: an emerging science Kathleen M. Carley1 Published online: 16 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract With the rise of online platforms where individuals could gather and spread information came the rise of online cybercrimes aimed at taking advantage of not just single individuals but collectives. In response, researchers and practitioners began trying to understand this digital playground and the way in which individuals who were socially and digitally embedded could be manipulated. What is emerging is a new scientific and engineering discipline—social cybersecurity. This paper defines this emerging area, provides case examples of the research issues and types of tools needed, and lays out a program of research in this area. Keywords Social cybersecurity · Social network analysis · Dynamic network analysis · Social media analytics · Review In today’s high tech world, beliefs opinions and attitudes are shaped as people engage with others in social media, and through the internet. Stories from creditable news sources and finding from science are challenged by actors who are actively engaged in influence operations on the internet. Lone wolfs, and large propaganda machines both disrupt civil discourse, sew discord and spread disinformation. Bots, cyborgs, trolls, sock-puppets, deep fakes, and memes are just a few of the technologies used in social engineering aimed at undermining civil society and supporting adversarial or business agendas. How can social discourse without undue influence persist in such an environment? What are the types of tools and theories needed to support such open discourse? Today scientists from a large number of disciplines are working collaboratively to develop these new tools and theories. There work has led to the emergence of a new area of science—social cybersecurity. Herein, this emerging scientific area is described. Illustrative case studies are used to showcase the types of tools and theories needed. New theories and methods are also described. * Kathleen M. Carley [email protected] 1
Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cybersecurity, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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1 Social cybersecurity In response to these cyber-mediated threats to democracy, a new scientific discipline has emerged—social cybersecurity. As noted by the National Academies of Science NAS (2019): Social cybersecurity is an applied computational social science with two objectives • “characterize, understand, and forecast cyber-mediated changes in human
behavior and in social, cultural, and political outcomes; and
• build a social cyber infrastructure that will allow the essential charac-
ter of a society to persist in a cyber-mediated information environment that is characterized by changing conditions, actual or imminent social cyberthreats, and cyber-mediated threats.”
Social cybersecurity is both a new scientific and a new engineering field. It is a computational social science with a large foot in the area
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