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Analyzing Blogs About Uyghur Discourse Using Topic Induced Hyperlink Network

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Complex Networks & Their Applications XII (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2023)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 1144))

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Abstract

The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group that descends from the general region of Central and East Asia. In recent years, the Chinese government has been accused of violating the human rights of Uyghur Muslims by imprisoning them in camps and subjecting them to forced labor, forced abortion, and other harmful treatments. Aside from Western news outlets, much information about the Uyghur issue is available on blogs and social media. The information found in these blogs provides an alternative lens to analyze the Uyghur discourse from nontraditional media outlets. Existing studies have analyzed different contents of blogs, such as the authors and comments. This research aims to employ a systematic approach to analyze information spread through hyperlinks from Uyghur-related blog posts in the Indo-Pacific region. We analyzed 318 blog posts and 5,598 hyperlinks published from January 2019 to September 2022 to achieve this. The analysis included topic modeling and toxicity analysis to identify the main topics in each blog post and their toxicity trends. The topics generated from the topic modeling were mapped onto a network of hyperlinks to develop a topic-induced network. This network helped examine, analyze, and visualize the network of blog hyperlinks that further revealed influential blog conduits raising awareness about the oppression of the Uyghur community.

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Acknowledgment

This research is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OIA-1946391, OIA-1920920, IIS-1636933, ACI-1429160, and IIS-1110868), U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (FA9550-22-1-0332), U.S. Office of Naval Research (N00014-10-1-0091, N00014-14-1-0489, N00014-15-P-1187, N00014-16-1-2016, N00014-16-1-2412, N00014-17-1-2675, N00014-17-1-2605, N68335-19-C-0359, N00014-19-1-2336, N68335-20-C-0540, N00014-21-1-2121, N00014-21-1-2765, N00014-22-1-2318), U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF-20-1-0262, W911NF-16-1-0189, W911NF-23-1-0011),U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (W31P4Q-17-C-0059), Arkansas Research Alliance, the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and the Australian Department of Defense Strategic Policy Grants Program (SPGP) (award number: 2020-106-094). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. COSMOS Research Center, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AR, USA

    Ifeanyichukwu Umoga, Stella Mbila-Uma, Mustafa Alassad & Nitin Agarwal

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  1. Ifeanyichukwu Umoga
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  2. Stella Mbila-Uma
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  3. Mustafa Alassad
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  4. Nitin Agarwal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stella Mbila-Uma .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  2. Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

  3. IUT Lumière - Université Lyon 2, University of Lyon, Bron, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  4. Department of Economics, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye

    Murat Donduran

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Umoga, I., Mbila-Uma, S., Alassad, M., Agarwal, N. (2024). Analyzing Blogs About Uyghur Discourse Using Topic Induced Hyperlink Network. In: Cherifi, H., Rocha, L.M., Cherifi, C., Donduran, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications XII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2023. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1144. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53503-1_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53503-1_34

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-53503-1

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