Social Media and Politics is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading digital strategists to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy. Social Media and Politics is hosted by Michael Bossetta, political scientist at Lund University. Check out the podcast's official website: https://socialmediaandpolitics.org.
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episode 63: Brexit Botnets and Hyperpartisan News Sharing on Twitter, with Dr. Marco Bastos
Dr. Marco Bastos, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at City University of London, discusses his research on Twitter bots and botnets in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. We talk about how to identify bots on Twitter, what these bots were sharing, and how the content they share on social media relates to the activity of human users. Later in the episode, we discuss the ethics behind researching bots and whether recent automated account crackdowns by Facebook and Twitter will improve political debates on social media.
Below are links to the studies we discussed in the episode:
Study 1: The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News
Study 2: The Public Accountability of Social Platforms: Lessons from a Study on Bots and Trolls in the Brexit Campaign