When the Bad is Good and the Good is Bad: Understanding Cyber Social Health Through Online Behavioral Change

In spite of significant progress in technologies to fight negative uses of social media, it has been challenging to detect, monitor, counter, and overcome the malevolent behaviors and use by illintentioned actors. The following topics are first discussed in brief: thick data modeling for understanding message content; flow of harmful information, trust, and provenance; the diffusion of new harmful content; contextualized big data analysis to combat malicious behaviors; and fairness and ethical considerations. We received 23 submissions for this special issue, which were reviewed by at least three reviewers. Nine articles were accepted based on the quality of the analysis, results, and presentation. In this issue, the following four articles will appear, while the remaining five articles will appear in the upcoming issue. The articles are briefly summarized here.