TY - GEN
T1 - What is Gab
T2 - 27th International World Wide Web, WWW 2018
AU - Zannettou, Savvas
AU - Bradlyn, Barry
AU - De Cristofaro, Emiliano
AU - Kwak, Haewoon
AU - Sirivianos, Michael
AU - Stringini, Gianluca
AU - Blackburn, Jeremy
N1 - Funding Information:
In this work. we have provided the rst characterization of a new social network called Gab. We analyzed 22M posts from 336K users, nding that Gab attracts the interest of users ranging from alt-right supporters and conspiracy theorists to trolls. We showed that Gab is extensively used for the discussion of news, world events, and politics-related topics, further motivating the need take it into account when studying information cascades on the Web. By looking at the posts for hate words, we also found that 5.4% of the posts include hate words. Finally, using changepoint analysis, we highlighted how Gab reacts very strongly to real-world events focused around white nationalism and support of Donald Trump. Acknowledgments. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ENCASE project (Grant Agreement No. 691025). The work reects only the authors’ views; the Agency and the Commission are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IW3C2 (International World Wide Web Conference Committee), published under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License.
PY - 2018/4/23
Y1 - 2018/4/23
N2 - Over the past few years, a number of new "fringe" communities, like 4chan or certain subreddits, have gained traction on the Web at a rapid pace. However, more often than not, little is known about how they evolve or what kind of activities they attract, despite recent research has shown that they influence how false information reaches mainstream communities. This motivates the need to monitor these communities and analyze their impact on the Web's information ecosystem. In August 2016, a new social network called Gab was created as an alternative to Twitter. It positions itself as putting "people and free speech first", welcoming users banned or suspended from other social networks. In this paper, we provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first characterization of Gab. We collect and analyze 22M posts produced by 336K users between August 2016 and January 2018, finding that Gab is predominantly used for the dissemination and discussion of news and world events, and that it attracts alt-right users, conspiracy theorists, and other trolls. We also measure the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, finding it to be much higher than Twitter, but lower than 4chan's Politically Incorrect board.
AB - Over the past few years, a number of new "fringe" communities, like 4chan or certain subreddits, have gained traction on the Web at a rapid pace. However, more often than not, little is known about how they evolve or what kind of activities they attract, despite recent research has shown that they influence how false information reaches mainstream communities. This motivates the need to monitor these communities and analyze their impact on the Web's information ecosystem. In August 2016, a new social network called Gab was created as an alternative to Twitter. It positions itself as putting "people and free speech first", welcoming users banned or suspended from other social networks. In this paper, we provide, to the best of our knowledge, the first characterization of Gab. We collect and analyze 22M posts produced by 336K users between August 2016 and January 2018, finding that Gab is predominantly used for the dissemination and discussion of news and world events, and that it attracts alt-right users, conspiracy theorists, and other trolls. We also measure the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, finding it to be much higher than Twitter, but lower than 4chan's Politically Incorrect board.
KW - alt-right
KW - changepoint analysis
KW - hate speech
KW - social networks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084603797&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85084603797&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3184558.3191531
DO - 10.1145/3184558.3191531
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85084603797
T3 - The Web Conference 2018 - Companion of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2018
SP - 1007
EP - 1014
BT - The Web Conference 2018 - Companion of the World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2018
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 23 April 2018 through 27 April 2018
ER -