Academic expericence

I have worked as Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) in Sweden until summer 2020. My research contains a huge amount of data from social media such as Facebook and Twitter etc. The research have focused on how to understand the users online behaviors, and further on to identify influential users. This have been done by modeling the behaviors on social media into interaction networks, which enable network-based and graph-based methods to model and understand the users’ behaviors.

Research topics includes Network Science and Social Media interactions.

Research summary

Social media provides users with services that enable them to interact both globally and instantly. The behaviors on social media can be modeled into interaction networks, which enable network-based and graph-based methods to model and understand the user behaviors.

An additional contribution from the research conducted is that a novel method of crawling that extracts all social interactions from Facebook is presented. They have collected 280 million posts in this research from public pages on Facebook using this crawling method. All this from 700 million users. With all this data it’s possible to illustrate interactions between different users.

Furthermore, a proposed method is used and validated for finding initial nodes for information cascade analyzes, and identification of influential users. Based upon the conducted research, it appears that the data mining approach, association rule learning, can be used successfully in identifying in influential user with high accuracy. In addition, the same method can also be used for identifying initial nodes in an information cascade setting, with no significant difference than other network-based methods.

Finally, the privacy-related consequences of posting online is an important area for users to consider. Therefore, mitigating privacy risks contributes to a secure environment and methods to protect user privacy are presented.

Media attention

• Risker finns med datainsamling från smarta högtalare, Sveriges Radio P4 Blekinge — local radio, March. 2019.
• Fredriks Facebook-relaterade forskning fick Säpo på fötter, Universitetsläraren — newspaper article, May 2018.
• Forskare: Så lätt är det att hämta information från Facebook, Sveriges Radio Vetenskaps Radion — national radio, May 2018.
• Scholars Have Data on Millions of Facebook Users. Who’s Guarding It?, New York Times — (republished in Bend Bulletin, Australian Financial Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Business Times Singapore, Laredo Morning Times, MySanAntonio), May 2018.
• Åhusforskare hittar nättroll, Kristianstadsbladet — newspaper article, Jan. 2018.
• Nytt datasystem kan hitta terrorister på Facebook”, SVT Blekinge — local tv, Jan. 2018.
• Han hittar trollen på nätet, Sydöstran — newspaper article, Jan. 2018.
• Kartlägger Facebook-vanor, Blekinge Läns Tidning — newspaper article, Jan. 2018.
• BTH-forskare hittar terrorister på Facebook, Blekinge Läns Tidning — newspaper article, Jan. 2018.

Invited talks and Presentations

I have given invited talks and presentations at the following events:

Academic

• Fake news och hotet mot demokratin Högskolan Kristianstad — invited panel, March 2018, Kristianstad, Sweden.
• Do We Really Need To Catch Them All? A New User-guided Social Media Crawling Method  4th Annual International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2 2018), July 2018, Chicago, USA.
• Do We Really Need To Catch Them All? A New User-guided Social Media Crawling Method  International School and Conference on Network Science 2018 (NetSci 2018), June 2018, Paris, France.
• Seed selection for information cascade in multilayer network  International School and Conference on Network Science 2018 (NetSci 2018), June 2018, Paris, France.
• Visualizing modus operandi similarity between burglaries in a city  3rd Symposium on the Structure and Mobility of Crime, NetSci2018 Satellite (NetCrime 2018), June 2018, Paris, France.
• Seed Selection for Information Cascade in Multilayer Networks  The Sixth International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications (Complex Networks 2017), November 2017, Lyon, France
• Finding influential users in social media using rule learning  2nd Annual International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2 2016), July 2016, Chicago, USA.
• Predicting user participation in social media  International School and Conference on Network Science (NetSciX 2016), January 2016, Wroclaw, Polen
• Crawling online social networks  2nd European Network Intelligence Conference (ENIC 2015), September 2015, Karlskrona, Sweden
• Making Social Interactions Accessible in Online Social Networks  Mining the Digital Information Networks, 17th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB 2013), June 2013, Karlskrona, Sweden
• Privacy Threats Related to User Profiling in Online Social Networks  Workshop for Security and Privacy in Social Networks, held in conjugation with SocialCom 2012 (SPSN 2012), September 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Non academic

• Integritetshot på Sociala medier, Aktiva seniorer Karlskrona — invited talk, Nov. 2018.
• Integritet på Sociala medier, Sveriges Radio P4 Kristianstad — local radio, March 2018.
• Så kan ditt Facebook konto kapas, Sveriges Radio P4 Blekinge — local radio, March 2018.
• Datainsamling från Sociala medier, Sveriges Radio P4 Blekinge — local radio, Jan 2018.

Professional Community Activities and Review Responsibilities

In addition to my research and publications, I have been an active participant in reviewing journal and conference papers (some of which are regarded as top quality journals and conferences in my field) on a regular basis as described in the activities below. I have also served as a member of several international program committees. Below is a list of the activities that I found relevant and also activities that I have been recently invited to:

Books

• Analyzing and Managing Online Communities — 2012

Journals

• Future Internet — 2017
• Complexity — 2017, 2018
• Security Informatics — 2018
• Entropy — 2018
• Symmetry — 2108

International Program Committees & Conference Review Activities

• 8th International Workshop on Security and Trust Management — (STM 2012)
• 14th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems — (SSS 2012)
• The 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining — (ASONAM 2013)
• The 17th International Conference on Electronic Publishing — (ElPub 2013)
• 2nd European Network Intelligence Conference, local arrangement chair — (ENIC 2015)
• International Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Big Data Analytics — (FAB 2016)
• 3th European Network Intelligence Conference — (ENIC 2016)
• 6th International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications — (ENIC 2017)
• Workshop on Social Influence, held in conjunction with the 2018 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2017)
• 4th European Network Intelligence Conference — (ENIC 2017)
• European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference, local arrangement chair — (EISIC 2018)

Research Grants, Project Management & Participation

• Research application for H2020-ICT-2015-10, CONSCIOUSNET — Collaboratively Networked SoCIologically Oriented media forUm for multi-level governance through audiovisual Social NETworking (rejected).