White or Blue, the Whale gets its Vengeance: A Social Media Analysis of the Blue Whale Challenge
Abhinav Khattar, Karan Dabas, Kshitij Gupta, Shaan Chopra, and, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru

TL;DR
This paper analyzes the spread and social media behavior related to the Blue Whale Challenge, aiming to understand its dissemination, participant behavior, and user demographics involved in this self-harm game.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive social media analysis of the Blue Whale Challenge, highlighting how it propagates and identifying user engagement patterns and demographics.
Findings
Identification of key hashtags and keywords used in posts
Insights into user behavior and engagement patterns
Demographic analysis of potential players
Abstract
The Blue Whale Challenge is a series of self-harm causing tasks that are propagated via online social media under the disguise of a "game." The list of tasks must be completed in a duration of 50 days and they cause both physical and mental harm to the player. The final task is to commit suicide. The game is supposed to be administered by people called "curators" who incite others to cause self-mutilation and commit suicide. The curators and potential players are known to contact each other on social networking websites and the conversations between them are suspected to take place mainly via direct messages which are difficult to track. Though, in order to find curators, the players make public posts containing certain hashtags/keywords to catch their attention. Even though a lot of these social networks have moderated posts talking about the game, yet some posts manage to pass their…
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Taxonomy
TopicsComplex Network Analysis Techniques · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies · Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
