# Multimodal Coordinated Online Behavior: Trade-offs and Strategies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12108 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12108/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 89 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Uncovering Coordinated Networks on Social Media: Methods and Case Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05658/) (2020)
- [Identifying Coordinated Accounts on Social Media through Hidden Influence and Group Behaviours](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11308/) (2020)
- [RTbust: Exploiting Temporal Patterns for Botnet Detection on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.04506/) (2019)
- [Community Detection in Multiplex Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07646/) (2019)
- [On the Detection of Disinformation Campaign Activity with Network Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13466/) (2020)
- [Coordinated Behavior on Social Media in 2019 UK General Election](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08370/) (2020)
- [Evaluation of Community Detection Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01130/) (2018)
- [VigDet: Knowledge Informed Neural Temporal Point Process for Coordination Detection on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15454/) (2021)
- [Unmasking the Web of Deceit: Uncovering Coordinated Activity to Expose Information Operations on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09884/) (2023)
- [Who's in the Gang? Revealing Coordinating Communities in Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08180/) (2020)
- [A General Method to Find Highly Coordinating Communities in Social Media through Inferred Interaction Links](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03409/) (2021)
- [Temporal Nuances of Coordination Network Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02588/) (2021)
- [The Spread of Propaganda by Coordinated Communities on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13046/) (2021)
- [Evaluating accuracy of community detection using the relative normalized mutual information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1501.03844/) (2015)
- [Multilayer network simplification: approaches, models and methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14808/) (2020)
- [From Reddit to Wall Street: The role of committed minorities in financial collective action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07361/) (2021)
- [Evidence of Inter-state Coordination amongst State-backed Information Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05907/) (2023)
- [Socio-Linguistic Characteristics of Coordinated Inauthentic Accounts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11867/) (2023)
- [Searching for superspreaders of information in real-world social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.1790/) (2014)
- ["You Know What to Do": Proactive Detection of YouTube Videos Targeted by Coordinated Hate Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08168/) (2018)
- [Temporal Dynamics of Coordinated Online Behavior: Stability, Archetypes, and Influence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06774/) (2023)
- [Detection and Characterization of Coordinated Online Behavior: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01257/) (2024)
- [Quantifying layer similarity in multiplex networks: a systematic study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11335/) (2017)
- [Labeled Datasets for Research on Information Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10609/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised detection of coordinated information operations in the wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06205/) (2024)
- [Coordinated Activity Modulates the Behavior and Emotions of Organic Users: A Case Study on Tweets about the Gaza Conflict](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05873/) (2024)
- [Beyond Interaction Patterns: Assessing Claims of Coordinated Inter-State Information Operations on Twitter/X](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17344/) (2025)
- [MulBot: Unsupervised Bot Detection Based on Multivariate Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10361/) (2022)
- [Coordinated Information Campaigns on Social Media: A Multifaceted Framework for Detection and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12729/) (2023)
- [Multi-Modal Embeddings for Isolating Cross-Platform Coordinated Information Campaigns on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12764/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Coordinated online behavior, which spans from beneficial collective actions to harmful manipulation such as disinformation campaigns, has become a key focus in digital ecosystem analysis. Traditional methods often rely on monomodal approaches, focusing on single types of interactions like co-retweets or co-hashtags, or consider multiple modalities independently of each other. However, these approaches may overlook the complex dynamics inherent in multimodal coordination. This study compares different ways of operationalizing multimodal coordinated behavior, examining the trade-off between weakly and strongly integrated models and their ability to capture broad versus tightly aligned coordination patterns. By contrasting monomodal, flattened, and multimodal methods, we evaluate the distinct contributions of each modality and the impact of different integration strategies. Our findings show that while not all modalities provide unique insights, multimodal analysis consistently offers a more informative representation of coordinated behavior, preserving structures that monomodal and flattened approaches often lose. This work enhances the ability to detect and analyze coordinated online behavior, offering new perspectives for safeguarding the integrity of digital platforms.