Hello! I'm Cole Polychronis.

Projects

Working Together (to Undermine Democratic Institutions): Challenging the Social Bot Paradigm in SSIO Research

In this project, we analyze 34 of the State-Sponsored Information Operations (SSIOs) published on Twitter's Information Operations Archive. In particular, we investigate whether SSIOs fit the assumptions of the Social Bot framework, the most popular way of modeling such activity in the existing literature. We find that the vast majority of SSIOs violate both the core theoretical assumption of the Social Bot framework, as well as the main way that it is operaitonalized in practical work. Instead, we find that SSIOs exhibit a substantial division of labor, with clusters of agents being responsible for various aspects of production and distribution of content, as well as general engagement with authentic Twitter users.

Misleading Beyond Visual Tricks: How People Actually Lie with Charts

In this project, we study the means by which people mislead others in data visualizations shared online. Specifically, we analyze a sample of over one and half years of posts sharing visualizations during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter. Our work shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, violations of visualization design guidelines are not the dominant way people mislead with charts. Specifically, they do not disproportionately lead to reasoning errors in posters' arguments. Through a series of examples, we present common reasoning errors and discuss how even faithfully-plotted data visualizations can be used to support misinformation online.

About Me

Thanks for stopping by! I am a fourth year PhD student. Broadly speaking, my research interests involve the study of misinformation campaigns on social media platforms like Twitter. In particular, I am interested in understanding the techniques that these campagins use to create content, spread it across the network, and ultimately get "authenthic users" to take up this work. In particular, I am interested in studying this activity through the lens of coordinated work and social role theory.

I received my undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Westminster College in SLC, Utah. I also attended a research experience for undergraduates (REU) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was during this experience at WPI that I discovered my love for data science and my interest in the intersection between technology and society.

A copy of my curriculum vitae is available here

Want to talk?

Excellent! You should be able to contact me any of the following places:

• cole.polychronis@gmail.com
• @aleph__null_
• linkedin.com/in/cole-polychronis/
• github.com/ColePolychronis

Elements

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    i++;
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