Are Social Bots on Twitter Political Actors? Empirical Evidence from a Ukrainian Social Botnet
Simon Hegelich, Dietmar Janetzko
2021Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media94 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF
Abstract
A considerable amount of data in social networks like Twitter is not generated by humans but by automatic programs (bots). Some of these bots are mimicking humans (socialbots) and can hardly be identified. In this article, we analyze a social botnet involved in the Ukrainian/Russian conflict. Based on text mining and unsupervised learning, we can identify three different behaviors: mimicry, window dressing, and reverberation.
Topics & Concepts
UkrainianBotnetMimicryPoliticsSocial mediaWindow (computing)Empirical evidenceInternet privacyComputer scienceWorld Wide WebData sciencePolitical scienceBiologyThe InternetLawEcologyLinguisticsEpistemologyPhilosophyOpinion Dynamics and Social InfluenceMisinformation and Its ImpactsSpam and Phishing Detection