{rfName}
Fl

Indexed in

Citations

10

Altmetrics

Analysis of institutional authors

Criado, NataliaCorresponding Author

Share

August 8, 2025
Publications
>
Article
No

Flash mobs, Arab Spring and protest movements: Can we analyse group identities in online conversations?

Publicated to: EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS. 62 212-224 - 2016-11-15 62(), DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2016.06.023

Authors:

Criado, Natalia; Rashid, Awais; Leite, Larissa
[+]

Affiliations

Kings Coll London, London WC2R 2LS, England - Author
Univ Lancaster, Secur Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YW, England - Author

Abstract

The Internet has provided people with new ways of expressing not only their individuality but also their collectivity i.e., their group affiliations. These group identities are the shared sense of belonging to a group. Online contact with others who share the same group identity can lead to cooperation and, even, coordination of social action initiatives both online and offline. Such social actions may be for the purposes of positive change, e.g., the Arab Spring in 2010, or disruptive, e.g., the England Riots in 2011. Stylometry and authorship attribution research has shown that it is possible to distinguish individuals based on their online language. In contrast, this work proposes and evaluates a model to analyse group identities online based on textual conversations amongst groups. We argue that textual features make it possible to automatically distinguish between different group identities and detect whether group identities are salient (i.e., most prominent) in the context of a particular conversation. We show that the salience of group identities can be detected with 95% accuracy and group identities can be distinguished from others with 84% accuracy. We also identify the most relevant features that may enable mal-actors to manipulate the actions of online groups. This has major implications for tools and techniques to drive positive social actions online or safeguard society from disruptive initiatives. At the same time, it poses privacy challenges given the potential ability to persuade or dissuade large groups online to move from rhetoric to action. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
[+]

Keywords

ModeNatural language processinOnline social mediaSocial identitiesSocial identity

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2016, it was in position 37/262, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Engineering, Electrical & Electronic.

Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.

Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2026-04-03:

  • WoS: 5
[+]

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2026-04-03:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 76.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 76 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 1.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 1 (Altmetric).
[+]

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: United Kingdom.

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (Criado Pacheco, Natalia) .

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been Criado Pacheco, Natalia.

[+]

Awards linked to the item

This work was partially supported by the EPSRC under grant "Identi-scope: Multiple identities as a resource for understanding and impacting behaviours in the digital world" (EP/J005053/1).
[+]