SMASH Edinburgh

Social Media Analysis & Support for Humanity (SMASH) group @InfAtEd

[Youssef Al Hariri|يوسف الحريري @DrYoussefHariri]

Thrilled to share our new paper: “Beyond the Game: Comparing Political News Coverage and Twitter Discussions during the 2022 FIFA World Cup”, now published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media!
With the 2026 Men’s World Cup just weeks away, it’s the perfect time to revisit the highly politicised Qatar 2022 tournament.

1/10

[ICWSM @icwsm]

🎤 Introducing the chairs of #ICWSM2027!

We're thrilled to welcome @bjoernross, @Walid_Magdy, and @clarellewellyn in the organization of next year's conference.

Stay tuned for updates 🚀

[SMASH Edinburgh @SMASH_Edin]

We are thrilled to see @icwsm coming to Edinburgh 😍

Our directors @Walid_Magdy and @bjoernross will act as the general chairs.

Please spread the word.

We look forward to meeting you in Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

#ICWSM2027

[ICWSM @icwsm]

🚨 Big news! #ICWSM '27 is heading to Edinburgh, Scotland 🏰

❗How submissions work:
• May 15, 2026: accept (→ ICWSM '27), R&R → Sept '26
• Sept 15, 2026: accept (→ ICWSM '27), R&R → Jan '27
• Jan 15, 2027: accept (→ ICWSM '27), R&R → May '27 (→ ICWSM '28)

[SMASH Edinburgh @SMASH_Edin]

Congratulations to two of our PhD graduates, Dr. Eddie and Dr. Mohamed, for their graduation ceremony.

Also congrats to the supervisors, @bjoernross & @Walid_Magdy!

Great to see more SMASH PhD graduates 😊

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

X now shows the number of username changes

Accounts change names identity/purpose overnight for malicious goals. We studied misleading repurposing before, found 100k repurposed accs

Interestingly X only now account for this vulnerability yet it still doesn't show the old names

[Agostina Calabrese 🦋 @agostina_cal]

At #EMNLP2025 to present the last chapter of my PhD 🐼

Let's talk #HateSpeech detection, generalisation and NLP safety at my poster:
📆tomorrow
🕟4.30pm

Look for the circus-themed poster 🎪🤸🏻‍♀️

Work with @tomsherborne @bjoernross and @mlapata at @EdinburghNLP + @cohere

[Mahmoud Fawzi @mhmudfwzi]

Hello from Norway! 👋🐋
Looking forward to seeing friends at #CSCW

My paper presentation: "The prophet said!" (https://t.co/qXZsERB6SD) will be on Tuesday at 16:30 in Peer Gynt-salen. See you there!

[SMASH Edinburgh @SMASH_Edin]

Congratulations to Dr. @Amrkeleg for successfully passing his PhD defence (Viva).

Congrats to the supervisors @Walid_Magdy & Sharon Goldwater.

Special thanks to @PontiEdoardo & @MonaDiab77 for acting as the examiners.

Another SMASH graduate 😊

@Edin_CDT_NLP
@EdinburghNLP

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

What is the impact of censorship (withholding accounts in certain countries) on X?

In our new #CIKM25 paper, we find that censored (but not suspended) accounts lose 25% engagements on their subsequent tweets and experience a 90% drop in follower growth @cikm2025

[Walid Magdy 🇵🇸 @Walid_Magdy]

If it happens and you are interested in dialects or Arabic NLP (⁦@_ArabicNLP)⁩, please visit our poster ⁦@aclmeeting⁩ presented by ⁦@Amrkeleg⁩

Happening now!

#ACL2025
#ACL2025NLP
#ArabicNLP

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

End of the year at the University of Edinburgh #InformaticsSpelfie2025

We had our photo taken from an airbus.. but the clouds had other plans 😂

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

How to tell if a trending slogan is a coordinated campaign?
We present a new campaign dataset & detection method in Large Engagement Networks for Classifying Coordinated Campaigns and Organic Twitter Trends @ICWSM & Density-aware Walks for Coordinated Campaign Detection @ECMLPKDD

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

At @ICWSM I’m running my mini-conference with three papers & posters ! Come check out the posters about cross-partisan interactions, coordinated replies & campaigns and beautiful GNNs! #ICWSM

[Tuğrulcan Elmas 🇹 🇯 @tugrulcanelmas]

Is social media still a political echo chamber?

In our new ICWSM25 paper "Cross-Partisan Interactions on Twitter" we analyzed 3M replies from 2020 and find that 34% were directed to users from opposite political alignment. However these interactions are more likely to be toxic🧵

[Walid Magdy 🇵🇸 @Walid_Magdy]

Two papers accepted to @aclmeeting about underserved languages by my PhD students @Amrkeleg (on Arabic dialects in NLP) and Zahra Bokaei (on Hate-speech detection in Persian).

I hope they'd obtain their visas on time to present their diverse work in Vienna

#ACL2025
#ACL2025NLP

[Walid Magdy 🇵🇸 @Walid_Magdy]

Nice to see our study @acm_chi on Facebook censorship to Arabic posts on the Palestine/Israel conflict featured in several news articles:

@YahooNews:
https://t.co/bj9ieBY7HT

@heraldscotland:
https://t.co/OLFDoYs3tU

@digitfyi:
https://t.co/bJ6xMq3zSI

[SMASH Edinburgh @SMASH_Edin]

It is great to see our ⁦@Walid_Magdy⁩ and Eddie Ungless present their work at ⁦@acm_chi⁩ #CHI2025!

Read more about their work:

https://t.co/lOmXW4k5lb

https://t.co/DjcuhOHAF7

[Walid Magdy 🇵🇸 @Walid_Magdy]

If you are in @acm_chi and interested to see a study on a sensitive topic, such as the Palestine/Israel conflict, please join my presentation this afternoon on our paper with @jonintweet & @Hamdy_Mubarak.

Details: https://t.co/SolqCcVWYH

#CHI2025

[SMASH Edinburgh @SMASH_Edin]

We've 4 papers @icwsm
- Experiences of Censorship on TikTok Across Marginalised Identities
- Cross-Partisan Interactions on Twitter
- Coordinated Reply Attacks in Influence Operations
- Large Engagement Networks for Classifying Coordinated Campaigns

@bjoernross @tugrulcanelmas

[ICWSM @icwsm]

🔥 The list of accepted papers (full, poster, and dataset) for #ICWSM25 is now live! Check it out: https://t.co/640yzSuVBC

🎟️ Want to attend the talks and connect with the authors? Registration is now open! Don’t miss the early bird rate — deadline is May 9th!

[Walid Magdy 🇵🇸 @Walid_Magdy]

In 2021, @facebook deleted my post about Palestine

In 2025, I'll present our paper:
"Who Should Set the Standards? Analysing Censored Arabic Content on Facebook during the Palestine-Israel Conflict" at @acm_chi

Preprint: https://t.co/7DyhlDvHhI

#CHI2025
#Censorship
#FreeSpeech