Political actors around the world are beginning to use social bots—automated software programs designed to interact with and imitate human users–to manipulate public opinion. Social bots have been used across numerous online platforms to spread various forms of propaganda, flood newsfeeds with political spam, and pad politicians’ social media follower lists. In many regimes, political leaders and government officials have commissioned bots to aggressively attack opponents, whether those opponents are civil society groups or the opposition candidates in rigged elections. Bots are also used, however, for causes related to activism, protest and social justice. Data journalists now use bots as ‘information radiators’–to publish stories that might otherwise go unseen. The algorithms that run bot software are often proprietary and hidden, and the content that a particular bot produces might be unexpected—even by coders—because bots operate in collaboration with real users. This talk highlights the history and trajectory of political bots via the presentation of a globally comparative event dataset alongside information gathered in the field from the makers and trackers of this technology.

Food and discussion begins at 12:30 pm. Everyone invited. Vivek Kundra, the Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia, will speak about the ways he is using digital technology […]

Food and discussion begins at 12:30 pm. Everyone invited. In East Africa, a small network of technologist and civil society actors, armed with an open source ethos and low cost […]