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On the Influence of Social Bots in Online Protests

Preliminary Findings of a Mexican Case Study

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Social Informatics (SocInfo 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10047))

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Abstract

Social bots can affect online communication among humans. We study this phenomenon by focusing on #YaMeCanse, the most active protest hashtag in the history of Twitter in Mexico. Accounts using the hashtag are classified using the BotOrNot bot detection tool. Our preliminary analysis suggests that bots played a critical role in disrupting online communication about the protest movement.

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Acknowledgments

We thank IPAM at UCLA and the organizers of the Cultural Analytics program, where this work was first conceived, for a wonderful working environment and for bringing diverse fields together. PSS is thankful to the Primrose Foundation for coding help. We thank Alberto Escorcia for collecting the tweet data and giving us access to it, and also Twitter for allowing access to data through their APIs.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Matemáticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Pablo Suárez-Serrato

  2. Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA

    Margaret E. Roberts

  3. School of Informatics and Computing, Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

    Clayton Davis & Filippo Menczer

  4. Indiana University Network Science Institute, Bloomington, USA

    Filippo Menczer

Authors
  1. Pablo Suárez-Serrato
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  2. Margaret E. Roberts
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  3. Clayton Davis
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  4. Filippo Menczer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pablo Suárez-Serrato .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Emma Spiro

  2. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

    Yong-Yeol Ahn

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Suárez-Serrato, P., Roberts, M.E., Davis, C., Menczer, F. (2016). On the Influence of Social Bots in Online Protests. In: Spiro, E., Ahn, YY. (eds) Social Informatics. SocInfo 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10047. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47874-6_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47874-6_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47873-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47874-6

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