Hybrid Intelligence Strategies for Identifying, Classifying and Analyzing Political Bots

Berta García-Orosa, Pablo Gamallo, Patricia Martín-Rodilla and Rodrigo Martínez-Castaño
Additional contact information
Berta García-Orosa: Department of Communication Sciences, Universidad de Santiago, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Pablo Gamallo: Centro de Investigación en Tecnoloxías da Información, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15705 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Patricia Martín-Rodilla: Information Retrieval Lab, Centro de Investigación en Tecnoloxías da Información e as Comunicacións (CITIC), Universidade da Coruña, Campus de Elviña s/n CP, 15071 A Coruña, Spain
Rodrigo Martínez-Castaño: Centro de Investigación en Tecnoloxías da Información, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15705 Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Social Sciences, 2021, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: Political bots, through astroturfing and other strategies, have become important players in recent elections in several countries. This study aims to provide researchers and the citizenry with the necessary knowledge to design strategies to identify bots and counteract what international organizations have deemed bots’ harmful effects on democracy and, simultaneously, improve automatic detection of them. This study is based on two innovative methodological approaches: (1) dealing with bots using hybrid intelligence (HI), a multidisciplinary perspective that combines artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, political science, and communication science, and (2) applying framing theory to political bots. This paper contributes to the literature in the field by (a) applying framing to the analysis of political bots, (b) defining characteristics to identify signs of automation in Spanish, (c) building a Spanish-language bot database, (d) developing a specific classifier for Spanish-language accounts, (e) using HI to detect bots, and (f) developing tools that enable the everyday citizen to identify political bots through framing.

Keywords: bots; framing; hybrid intelligence; empowerment; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/10/357/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/10/10/357/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:10:y:2021:i:10:p:357-:d:644015

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().