Detection and Characterization of Coordinated Online Behavior: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews methods for detecting and understanding coordinated online behavior, highlighting challenges and future research directions in social media manipulation and community dynamics.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive framework unifying industry and academic definitions and critically discusses existing detection and characterization techniques.

Findings

Identifies open challenges in detecting coordinated online behavior.

Proposes a unified framework for studying online coordination.

Highlights promising research directions for practitioners and policymakers.

Abstract

Coordination is a fundamental aspect of life. The advent of social media has made it integral also to online human interactions, such as those that characterize thriving online communities and social movements. At the same time, coordination is also core to effective disinformation, manipulation, and hate campaigns. This survey collects, categorizes, and critically discusses the body of work produced as a result of the growing interest on coordinated online behavior. We reconcile industry and academic definitions, propose a comprehensive framework to study coordinated online behavior, and review and critically discuss the existing detection and characterization methods. Our analysis identifies open challenges and promising directions of research, serving as a guide for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in understanding and addressing the complexities inherent to online coordination.