Twitter bots for good
Twitter bots currently have a bad reputation. They are accused of spreading fake news and have the potential to mislead other real Twitter users. Real users may see a popular post and believe that other real users are spreading the posts. However, researchers at USC have tried to use twitter bots for good. They had a network of bots spread hashtags with positive messages such as getting flu shots. They monitored when other users retweeted the content and how much exposure they had to the content before retweeting. The researchers found that increased exposure to the message resulted in an increased probability of adoption. The researchers believe that new strategies can be developed to spread important public announcements. Currently many users rely on one influential source such as the CDC for public health announcements. The study suggests that using multiple decentralized sources would be more effective at sharing important information.
This article relates to information cascades that we have studied in class. Information cascades occur when people observe the actions of earlier people and infer something from their actions. On Twitter, users read popular posts and trust the content because of the posts’ popularity. The users might believe that the other users know something that they don’t know which is an informational effect from following the crowd. The problem occurs when Twitter bots spread information that might be fake or misleading. The researchers in the article tried using Twitter bots to spread positive messages. They hope that the Twitter bots can start an information cascade that will benefit others.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170922150532.htm
Bjarke Mønsted, Piotr Sapieżyński, Emilio Ferrara, Sune Lehmann. Evidence of complex contagion of information in social media: An experiment using Twitter bots. PLOS ONE, 2017; 12 (9): e0184148 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184148