Bots Among Us: Prevalence, Influence, and Roles of Automated Accounts in the German Twitter Follow Network
Abstract
Social bots are undermining trust in social media. They spread low-credibility content, fake news, and spam. However, most research is based on bots that actively share links or keywords, rather than assessing the longer-term presence of bots as an integral part of platforms. To address this gap, we present what to our knowledge is the first study that assesses the prevalence, influence, and roles of automated accounts in a Twitter follow network on a national scale. This allows us to analyse the potential impact of bots beyond the context of single events and topics.
Type
Publication
In AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
