{"id":4921,"date":"2018-10-15T14:17:14","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T14:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/us\/?p=4921"},"modified":"2023-08-21T18:36:18","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T18:36:18","slug":"from-bots-to-campaigners-how-social-media-influences-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocialelement.agency\/us\/from-bots-to-campaigners-how-social-media-influences-elections","title":{"rendered":"From bots to campaigners: how social media influences elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

From its emergence in the mid 2000s, Social Media established itself quickly as a vital conduit for communication, whether factual or fantasy. Sharing is done instinctively by most, rapidly propagating information without much thoughts on checking its veracity.<\/span>
\nIn recent times, we have seen plenty of examples of rogue organisations and nations using this behaviour to manipulate populations, attempting to influence them to act in ways that will benefit their goals. Similarly, grassroots ethical movements have benefited greatly from the megaphone effect that Social Media provides.<\/span>
\nThe challenge for social media platforms (those that truly mean and believe in their statements of providing a neutral platform for positive discussions, anyway!) is to celebrate and promote genuine activism, while protecting its users from emotional manipulation from corrupt actors. <\/span><\/p>\n

The power of social media to change minds and drive social change<\/b><\/h2>\n

When it comes to affecting people\u2019s outlook on national political discourse, opinion are greatly affected by what they read on Social Media. <\/span>The UN have claimed<\/span><\/a> that Facebook has knowingly acted as a platform for the spread of hate speech and are responsible for allowing the promotion of hatred fuelling the ongoing genocide in Myanmar.<\/span>
\nAccording to recent <\/span>Pew Research<\/span><\/a>, almost 3 in 10 young US men have changed their mind on an issue due to something they\u2019ve seen on social media. <\/span>
\nIn the end of July 2018, Facebook announced that it had discovered <\/span>\u201c<\/span>coordinated inauthentic behavior<\/span><\/a>,\u201d<\/span> on its platform \u2013 targeting the midterm elections. What they uncovered were attempt to test out interest levels in fake white supremacy events as well as encourage attendance and boost attendance numbers to influence the perception of the events. Around 290,000 followed at least one of the Pages removed by Facebook, and over 9,500 organic \u201cfake news\u201d posts were created by a total of 8 inauthentic Pages and accounts. $11,000 was spent on 150 ads in a 6 month period.<\/span>
\nThis points to concerted efforts (in this case the suspicion, not confirmed, was directed to Russian agents) to promote unfactual information, influence behaviour and manipulate opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n

How Bots help to shape political discourse <\/b><\/h2>\n

Worrying data came to light around the sheer scale of these attempts; Much of this misinformation is done via large networks of bots or automated fake accounts, for example <\/span>50m Twitter accounts <\/span><\/a>are suspected to be bots, may of which outputting dubious content. China\u2019s \u201c50 Cent Army\u201d \u00a0(so called on the basis they were paid 50 cents per promotional comment made on disinformation posts) uses vast numbers of accounts to \u201c<\/span>flood the internet with comments meant to distract people from crises or to praise the government<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span>
\nThese large networks of bots manipulate public discourse by being used to initiate a conversation or promote a position into online communities via the use of Sockpuppet accounts, usually actively managed by a human. These posts are then amplified by tens of thousands of automated accounts (amplifier bots) which repurpose into a new post or retweet the original.<\/span>
\n“Approval bots” engage with specific tweets or comments, Liking, retweeting, or replying to enhance credibility, and give legitimacy to an idea as well as maintain it in a search stream. <\/span>
\nIn some vigorously contested topic areas, bots are often used to\u00a0<\/span>harass and attack<\/span><\/a> individuals and organizations in an attempt to push them out of the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some examples:<\/span><\/p>\n