Insider Threat: Language-action Cues in Group Dynamics

Language as a symbolic medium plays an important role in virtual communications. Words communicated online as action cues can provide indications of an actor's behavioral intent. This paper describes an ongoing investigation into the impact of a deceptive insider on group dynamics in virtual team collaboration. An experiment using an online game environment was conducted in 2014. Our findings support the hypothesis that language-action cues of group interactions will change significantly after an insider has been compromised and makes efforts to deceive. Furthermore, the language used in group dynamic interaction will tend to employ more cognition, inclusivity and exclusivity words when interacting with each other and with the focal insider. Future work will employ finely tuned complex Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count dictionaries to identify additional language-action cues for deception.

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