2016/06/20 by Philip N. Howard, Howard, Philip N., Bence Kollányi +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social Media and Politics #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1606.06356
openalex publication_date 2016/06/20 · openalex created_date 2022/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Bots are social media accounts that automate interaction with other users,\nand they are active on the StrongerIn-Brexit conversation happening over\nTwitter. These automated scripts generate content through these platforms and\nthen interact with people. Political bots are automated accounts that are\nparticularly active on public policy issues, elections, and political crises.\nIn this preliminary study on the use of political bots during the UK referendum\non EU membership, we analyze the tweeting patterns for both human users and\nbots. We find that political bots have a small but strategic role in the\nreferendum conversations: (1) the family of hashtags associated with the\nargument for leaving the EU dominates, (2) different perspectives on the issue\nutilize different levels of automation, and (3) less than 1 percent of sampled\naccounts generate almost a third of all the messages.\n