Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #polbots
Most recents (2)
[Thread] 1/ Here are some reflections on the nomenclature related to bots, trolls, & 'influence campaigns.' It's something that comes up a lot & I wanted to reflect on. Firstly, lots of people use the terms troll and bot interchangeably. While this might be a convenient #polbots
2/ shorthand for discussing the vast array of 'weirdos' online they are distinct. Bots are usually automated or semi-automated accounts, programmed to engage in specific behaviors usually at frequent intervals. On Twitter they may look like real accounts, and are designed to
3/ deceive. Trolls are usually real people behind an account. While the term 'bot' describes the likelihood of automation, troll is more a behavioral characteristic. Trolls engage with people, intimidate, harass, criticise, deflect, use logical fallacies, and spread
[#Thread] 1/ This thread is on Tulsi Gabbard and the inordinate amount of support she appears to have online from #MAGA and pro-Trump accounts. Accounts that some believe to be part of an influence operation - Russian or otherwise. The findings are quite startling... #polbots
2/ I analysed several batches of tweets. Most of these are from between 15th and 20th of October. I analysed the hashtags #Tulsi2020 and #TulsiGabbard. I also analysed #QueenOfWarmongers, which refers to Tulsi's tweet where she called Hilary Clinton the 'queen of warmongers'
3/ Here is a link to that tweet, which was retweeted 79k times. I removed duplicates from my main sample of accounts tweeting on "Tulsi 2020" and "Tulsi Gabbard". This left around 10,000 unique accounts producing in the region of around 20,000 tweets.
