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

Gulliksen, Johanna LU and Helldén, Erik LU (2018) STVA22 20172
Department of Political Science
Abstract
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... (More)
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. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Gulliksen, Johanna LU and Helldén, Erik LU
supervisor
organization
course
STVA22 20172
year
type
L2 - 2nd term paper (old degree order)
subject
keywords
democracy, deliberative democracy, democratic implications, social bots, social media
language
English
id
8930678
date added to LUP
2018-08-24 10:56:55
date last changed
2018-08-24 10:56:55
@misc{8930678,
  abstract     = {{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.}},
  author       = {{Gulliksen, Johanna and Helldén, Erik}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{A New Threat to Democracy? Examining the Democratic Implications of the Social Bot Phenomenon}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}