10:00am - 11:00am
EB P03
Presenter: Utkucan Balci
Advisor: Jeremy Blackburn
When: Monday, October 21 @ 10am
Where: EB P03
Title: A Data-Driven Exploration Of Niche Web Community Behavior
Abstract: The Internet has connected people with similar interests, giving web communities a platform for social interaction and engagement. However, it has also enabled those with less acceptable interests to bridge geographic distances that once kept them apart. This has amplified the real-world impact of online harassment and extremism, making it an emerging threat to society. Understanding the formation, evolution, and expression of these communities is increasingly important, as there are virtually no boundaries to creating new ones.
In this prospectus, I will present my completed and ongoing work on three distinct web communities: 1) Exploring the varieties of online women’s ideological spaces, 2) A data-driven exploration of left-wing extremists on social media, and 3) Understanding Rumble’s podcast dynamics. The research approach combines a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods, leveraging advanced techniques like web scraping, data mining, toxicity analysis, and natural language processing (NLP) to extract and analyze data. Additionally, social network analysis is used to decode the interaction dynamics of these communities. My work aims to uncover differences and similarities in niche web community behaviors, providing a richer, more comprehensive view of the web.
