Social Bots in the Networked Public Sphere

Social Bots are computer programs that mimic human behavior and possibly manipulate humans. This project tackles the questions of how to detect them using three methods and a dataset consisting of political discourses across five Western democracies. It aims to shed light on which methods can and should be used the determine social bots’ influence on key democratic processes.

Runtime: 2018

Funding: UZH & Free University of Berlin Joint Seed Funding

Participants: Prof. Dr. Mike S. Schäfer, Tobias Keller (UZH), Prof. Dr. Ulrike Klinger (Free University of Berlin

Total Sum: 3,000 EUR