Political Bots and the Manipulation of Public Opinion in Venezuela

Social and political bots have a small but strategic role in Venezuelan political conversations. These automated scripts generate content through social media platforms and then interact with people. In this preliminary study on the use of political bots in Venezuela, we analyze the tweeting, following and retweeting patterns for the accounts of prominent Venezuelan politicians and prominent Venezuelan bots. We find that bots generate a very small proportion of all the traffic about political life in Venezuela. Bots are used to retweet content from Venezuelan politicians but the effect is subtle in that less than 10 percent of all retweets come from bot-related platforms. Nonetheless, we find that the most active bots are those used by Venezuela's radical opposition. Bots are pretending to be political leaders, government agencies and political parties more than citizens. Finally, bots are promoting innocuous political events more than attacking opponents or spreading misinformation.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Do Social Bots Dream of Electric Sheep? A Categorisation of Social Media Bot Accounts

So-called 'social bots' have garnered a lot of attention lately. Previous research showed that they attempted to influence political events such as the Brexit referendum and the US presidential elections. It remains, however, somewhat unclear what exactly can be understood by the term 'social bot'. This paper addresses the need to better understand the intentions of bots on social media and to develop a shared understanding of how 'social' bots differ from other types of bots. We thus describe a systematic review of publications that researched bot accounts on social media. Based on the results of this literature review, we propose a scheme for categorising bot accounts on social media sites. Our scheme groups bot accounts by two dimensions - Imitation of human behaviour and Intent.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Information Systems, 201

A New Threat to Democracy? Examining the Democratic Implications of the Social Bot Phenomenon

Social media provides tools that enable people to share their political views and coordinate collective action and has often been praised for entailing numerous democratic opportunities. But what happens when someone finds a way to exploit these tools? Social bots, algorithmically driven software programs designed to mimic and possibly alter human behavior on social media forums, have been used to manipulate public opinion during several major political events during the last few years. The purpose of this study is to analyze the social bot phenomenon from a democratic perspective. Our research question is: what are the democratic implications of the use of social bots in political discussions online? To answer this, we have applied a theoretical framework consisting of suitable deliberative democracy theories on relevant empirical material. Our findings suggest that the use of social bots indeed has democratic implications, mostly because the bots spread inaccurate information on political topics and distort political discussions online

Media coups and desinformation in the digital era. Irregular war in Latin America

Este artículo reflexiona acerca del papel que tienen los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales en el fenómeno de los “golpes mediáticos” en América Latina. Para ello, se explora el modelo de propaganda a través del análisis de cuatro casos relevantes de manipulación y desinformación en la región: los casos de Venezuela, México, Brasil y Ecuador. La principal conclusión a la que se llegó es que es necesario regular el sistema de medios tradicional y digital en pro de la democracia y la paz para impedir la desinfor-mación y los golpes mediáticos.This article reflects on the role of the media and social networks in the phenomenon of “media coups” in Latin America. To this end, the propaganda model is explored through the analysis of four relevant cases of manipulation and disinformation in the region: those of Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil and Ecuador. The main conclusion reached is that it is necessary to regulate the traditional and digital media system for democracy and peace to prevent disinformation and “media coups”

“Software agents and haunted media : the twitter bot as political actor"

This report examines the rhetorical construction of Twitter bots as nonhuman political agents in press coverage of the 2016 U.S. election. It takes the rhetorical framing of “the Twitter bot” as a case study to argue that Twitter bots are a contemporary example of what media historian Jeffrey Sconce calls “haunted media” -- a communication technology that has been culturally ascribed an “uncanny” “agency.” First, this report provides a comparative close reading of two pieces from The Atlantic and The New York Times as examples of mainstream press coverage of bots shortly before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Second, drawing on Sconce’s analysis of nineteenth and twentieth century media ecologies, it argues that “the Twitter bot” has been rhetorically constructed as haunted media through discourses that are inseparable from larger political narratives. The third and final section speculates on possible theoretical frameworks to expand this project in further inquiries. This report aims to demonstrate that haunted media narratives predate and persist beyond a specific election cycle or medium, and to argue that the construction of “haunted media” occurs alongside constructed concepts of democracy in our technologically mediated society. In doing so, this report contributes to the field of rhetoric of digital technology by bringing it further into conversation with political rhetoric.Englis

SOCIAL MEDIA IN VENEZUELA: A TOOL FOR AUTHORITARIANS, A BOOST TO SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, OR BOTH?

Various social media platforms have been used as tools by social movements and have propelled democratic ideals. Social media has also been used by autocratic leaders to control and repress populations. Both uses of social media have played a prominent role in Venezuela’s political discourse since 2000. However, while it is clear that social media has played a salient role in Venezuela’s politics, what remains unclear is how effective these platforms are at empowering the social movement sector versus helping authoritarian regimes. The case of Venezuela offers insights useful in this debate because it was one of the first countries in South America to experience democratic backsliding during the digital age. Therefore, this thesis originally sought to answer the following questions: How does social media help the Venezuelan authoritarian regime? How does social media help the social movement sector in Venezuela? How can we measure the impact of these tactics? Does social media help the regime or the social movement sector more? Because of the limited data available in secondary research, it is not possible to directly measure effectiveness. Nevertheless, the analysis did reveal that the regime’s and opposition’s use of social media in Venezuela has augmented their traditional strategies. Understanding which faction it helps more overall will require access to social media databases.Captain, United States Air ForceApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Fighting Abuse while Promoting Free Speech: Policies to Reduce Opinion Manipulation in Online Platforms

With the rise of misinformation epidemic, this study aims to empirically investigate the consequences of an online commenting platform’s activity-capping policy on abusers’ and regular users’ activities. Utilizing a quasi-experimental setting, we find that restrictive policies not only curtail the activity of the abusers, but also promote the activity of regular users. Results show that the policy has asymmetric effect on abusers and regular users— while it effectively reduces the actions of the malicious users by 1.8%, it promotes the activities of the regular users by 2.2%. To better understand the behavioral change of the regular users, we draw from the rational economic perspective of voting decisions and provide initial evidence that such policy measures reinforce the subjective probability of being influential on the outcome. This study will provide valuable implications to managers and policy makers to estimate the consequences of and to combat against malicious behaviors in online platforms