Even a few bots can shift public opinion in big ways
Monday, November 5, 2018 - 10:00
in Psychology & Sociology
Nearly two-thirds of the social media bots with political activity on Twitter before the 2016 U.S. presidential election supported Donald Trump. But all those Trump bots were far less effective at shifting people's opinions than the smaller proportion of bots backing Hillary Clinton. As my recent research shows, a small number of highly active bots can significantly change people's political opinions. The main factor was not how many bots there were – but rather, how many tweets each set of bots issued.