In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, more than 10,000 automated Twitter accounts got caught conducting a coordinated campaign of tweets to discourage people from voting. These automated accounts may seem authentic to some, but a tool called Botometer was able to identify them while they pretentiously argued and agreed, for example, that “democratic men who vote drown out the voice of women.” We are part of the team that developed this tool that detects the bot accounts on social media.
Our next effort, called BotSlayer, is aimed at helping journalists and the general public spot these automated social media campaigns while they are happening.
It’s the latest step in our research laboratory’s work over the past few years. At Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, we are uncovering and analyzing how false and misleading information spreads online.