Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Figure 1:  An example of a Coyote ad on social media in Spanish. (Figure 1 in  Kodandaram et al. )   Introduction Social media has revolutionized how information flows, connecting people across the globe at an unprecedented scale. However, this same connectivity has made these platforms fertile ground for illicit activities, including human smuggling. This issue, though not immediately visible to most people, poses a severe humanitarian crisis. We explore in our paper published at the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media 2024 titled " Unveiling Coyote Ads: Detecting Human Smuggling Advertisements on Social Media, " how traffickers exploit these platforms to lure vulnerable individuals, particularly those seeking better opportunities or fleeing dangerous situations. The study focuses on identifying and analyzing “ coyote ads, ” which are advertisements posted by human smugglers. Our goal was clear: to develop an effective detection mechanism that exposes thes...

Figure 1 Venkatraman et al. The language use in accessibility forum discussion threads (left) differs from that in general forums (right). HT'24 -  The ACM Hypertext conference is a leading platform for presenting top-tier, peer-reviewed research on hypertext concepts, systems, and their applications. It emphasizes topics in hypertext research, including advancements in social media, the semantic web, dynamic and computational hypertext, hypermedia. Our research paper " You Shall Know a Forum by the Words they Keep: Analyzing Language Use in Accessibility Forums for Blind Users ",  was published in   HT '24: Proceedings of the 35th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media . In this blog post, I will summarize our research paper, which dives into the unique language patterns in forums dedicated to blind users, especially those using accessibility tools like screen readers. This research not only highlights the distinct linguistic characteristics of these spaces b...

Presenting research on the deceptive practices of coyote advertisements in illegal migration I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the ACM Hypertext 2024 conference in Poznań, Poland. The conference, known for its focus on the study of hypertext and web communities, provided an exciting platform for researchers to share innovative ideas. The event was filled with insightful discussions, networking opportunities, and, of course, the presentation of cutting-edge papers. ACM Hypertext '24 is almost here. Will you be there? #HT2024 @ACMHT pic.twitter.com/eJbNeDYEeI — Frode A. Hegland (@liquidizer) September 8, 2024 One of the highlights for me was presenting “ Unveiling Coyote Ads: Detecting Human Smuggling Advertisements on Social Media ”, for which I am a co-author. Our paper explores the detection of human smuggling advertisements using social media platforms. The research delves into machine learning techniques to identify these harmful ads, presenting a novel ...

The  ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media  provided an opportunity for speakers and attendees to participate in an onsite-online hybrid model for the first time in history. The conference also ensured effective interaction between on-site participants and online participants. The conference was conducted for four days between June 28 – July 1, 2022. This year HT `22 was co-located with   ACM WebSci 2022 and  ACM UMAP 2022 . I mainly attended the paper presentations (technical sessions) on Thursday and Friday but missed the blue sky ideas session. I continuously monitored tweets related to the conference using #HT2022 , and  #hypertext hashtags. This year, our paper " Enabling Convenient Online Collaborative Writing for Low Vision Screen Magnifier Users " was accepted and the presentation was conducted on Friday. All the papers and videos submitted by the authors are available in  @ACMDL  and can be downloaded for free for a limite...

Leaping Tiger statue next to the College of Arts at Towson University From July 9 - 12, the 2018 ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT) took place at the College of Arts at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Researchers from around the world presented the results of complete or ongoing work in tutorial, poster, and paper sessions . Also, during the conference I had the opportunity to present a full paper: " Bootstrapping Web Archive Collections from Social Media " on behalf of co-authors Dr. Michele Weigle and Dr. Michael Nelson . Day 1 (July 9, 2018) The first day of the conference was dedicated to a tutorial ( Efficient Auto-generation of Taxonomies for Structured Knowledge Discovery and Organization ) and three workshops: Human Factors in Hypertext (HUMAN) Opinion Mining, Summarization and Diversification Narrative and Hypertext I attended the Opinion Mining, Summarization and Diversification workshop. The workshop started with ...