2023/12/29 by Kai‐Cheng Yang, Yang, Kai-Cheng, Onur Varol +11
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Spam and Phishing Detection
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.17423
openalex publication_date 2023/12/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
While social media are a key source of data for computational social science, their ease of manipulation by malicious actors threatens the integrity of online information exchanges and their analysis. In this Chapter, we focus on malicious social bots, a prominent vehicle for such manipulation. We start by discussing recent studies about the presence and actions of social bots in various online discussions to show their real-world implications and the need for detection methods. Then we discuss the challenges of bot detection methods and use Botometer, a publicly available bot detection tool, as a case study to describe recent developments in this area. We close with a practical guide on how to handle social bots in social media research.