Measuring influence of Twitter bots on Canadians is hard: report

Trying to measure how much influence Twitter bots take on individuals is very hard, according to a new report by the CBC.

As the federal ballot nears, Twitter is getting flooded with lots of fake accounts, though these bots have always existed. Bots are automatic accounts that are run by software instead of real humans; they automatically tweet, retweet, and follow accounts.

According to the CBC written report, researchers say that this business organization is "overblown" and the issue is "part of a bigger system aimed at manipulating opinion online."

Fenwick McKelvey, an assistant professor who researches social media at Concordia Academy in Montreal, said that in that location was too much attention being placed on bots and that they're "at best, a pocket-sized part of" the issues around social media.

Information technology'south worth calculation that there are some bots that impersonate people, merely the business organization that people accept around them is overblown, as noted by John Grey, the CEO of Mentionmapp Analytics, a visitor that collects data on social media.

He did add that it's difficult to measure the influence that bots have besides as how they impact humans.

"I don't believe nosotros can actually talk well-nigh touch," he told the CBC. "We don't have the research. We don't have the data, and I don't fifty-fifty know if nosotros have the correct questions to ask about the touch."

An example of bots trending was in July when the hashtag #TrudeauMustGo rocketed to the pinnacle of Twitters' trending listing in Canada. The National Observer reported that a closer await revealed accounts tweeting were bots; they were tweeting at 'non-human rates' causing the hashtag to make information technology to the trending list.

McKelvey told the CBC that it's hard to measure out the influence of these bots as Twitter doesn't publicly say how a trending topic is created.

Source: CBC