Source-linked AI summary
Political Bots and the Manipulation of Public Opinion in Venezuela
Michelle Forelle, Phil Howard, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Saiph Savage
TL;DR
The paper asks how political bots participate in Venezuelan political conversations and studies prominent politicians’ tweeting and retweeting patterns. Using politician tweets, retweeter identities, and retweeting platforms, it finds that bots have a limited overall presence but a distinctive role, especially around Venezuela’s radical opposition.
Problem
The study examines how political bots are used in Venezuelan political conversations, where bots may interact with people and amplify political content.
Method
The researchers analyzed prominent Venezuelan politicians’ tweets, retweeters, and retweeting platforms, using bot-related platforms to identify likely bots.
Results
Less than 10 percent of all retweets came from bot-related platforms, while the most active bots were associated with Venezuela’s radical opposition.
Takeaways & Limitations
Bots generated a very small proportion of Venezuela’s political traffic but were used to retweet politicians and to present themselves as leaders, agencies, and parties more than citizens.
Takeaways & Limitations
The study cannot report the total number of bots because Twitter limits researchers to the 100 most recent retweets, and the sample was designed for comparison across selected politicians.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Social and political bots have a small but strategic role in Venezuelan political conversations. These automated scripts generate content through social media platforms and then interact with people. In this preliminary study on the use of political bots in Venezuela, we analyze the tweeting, following and retweeting patterns for the accounts of prominent Venezuelan politicians and prominent Venezuelan bots. We find that bots generate a very small proportion of all the traffic about political life in Venezuela. Bots are used to retweet content from Venezuelan politicians but the effect is subtle in that less than 10 percent of all retweets come from bot-related platforms. Nonetheless, we find that the most active bots are those used by Venezuela's radical opposition. Bots are pretending to be political leaders, government agencies and political parties more than citizens. Finally, bots are promoting innocuous political events more than attacking opponents or spreading misinformation.
FROM SOCIAL BOTS TO POLITICAL BOTS
Political bots are automated systems that can amplify messages, manipulate debate, and operate through social-media platforms. In Venezuela, political bot activity emerged amid highly engaged online political conversations and allegations of coordinated manipulation.
- Political bots: Political actors and governments use bots to manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues.
- Social bots: Political bots are computer-generated programs that post, tweet, or message autonomously through social-media platforms.They often access platforms directly through application programming interfaces.
- Data and political control: The Cuba-Venezuela data relationship illustrates how political ties and expectations of surveillance can outweigh technical considerations in digital infrastructure.The paper connects this setting to authoritarian governments’ capacity for sophisticated bot use and big-data analysis.
- Political communication: Venezuelan Twitter users are a relatively small but politically engaged segment of the population.Around 14 percent of active internet users in Venezuela use Twitter, and Venezuelans are especially likely in Latin America to share political views on social media.
- Political bots: Evidence cited in the paper links Venezuelan political bot activity to pro-government messaging, suspicious retweeting, and hijacked accounts.Maduro’s retweet volume contrasted with relatively low favorites, and one account reported as many as 2,500 bot retweeters.
SAMPLING AND METHOD
The study samples prominent Venezuelan politicians from the ruling party and opposition, then analyzes their tweets, retweets, and retweeting platforms. It uses platform behavior to identify likely bots while acknowledging that Twitter’s access limits constrain the sample.
- Sample: Six highly active Venezuelan politicians were tracked: four from PSUV, one from MUD, and one from VP.The sample included prominent ruling-party and opposition accounts for comparison.
- Research design: The researchers collected politicians’ tweets, identified retweeters, and examined the platforms used for retweeting.They also studied the profiles of frequent retweeters using suspicious bot-related platforms.
- Bot identification: Bot likelihood was inferred from use of platforms such as Botize or Masterfollow, whose accounts retweeted the same content at the same time.The study analyzed platform type rather than determining whether each individual tweet was bot-generated.
- Sampling limitations: Twitter permits researchers to retrieve only the 100 most recent retweets for a given tweet, preventing a complete count of Venezuelan political bots.
- Data collection: 11,796 tweets and 205,077 retweets were collected from January 1 through May 31, 2015.About 2 percent of the retweets were bot-generated, with some politicians reaching 5 percent bot-related retweet traffic.
- Data collection: The retweet sample focused on the top 15 percent of most frequently retweeted posts, totaling 1,721 tweets.Twitter query limits and hourly API restrictions shaped this aggressive collection strategy.
FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Bots represented a small share of Venezuelan political retweets, but their use varied by politician and was concentrated among radical opposition accounts. The profiled bots commonly impersonated political organizations or citizens and were used mainly for impression management.
- Bots Used Mostly By Radical Opposition: Almost 7 percent of retweets of Leopoldo Lopez’s tweets came from bot platforms, compared with less than 1 percent for Diosdado Cabello.Bot-platform use varied substantially across politicians.
- Bots Used Mostly By Radical Opposition: Bots presenting themselves as official political candidates were concentrated in the radical opposition party VP rather than PSUV or the mainstream opposition party MUD.The study reports relatively little bot activity from MUD compared with PSUV and VP.
- Bots Pretending to Be Government, Parties and Politicians: Many profiled political bots represented VP branches in states and cities, used Botize for retweets, and embedded “VP” in their usernames.Examples included accounts for Carabobo and the municipality of Diego Ibarra.
- Bots Pretending to Be Government, Parties and Politicians: Some accounts showed bot-like behavior by using one automated platform primarily for political retweets, while localized account patterns could also reflect a media strategy rather than planted opposition bots.@VPBejuma used Botize for more than 100 retweets, whereas @VPDiegoIbarra’s activity was interpreted as potentially serving localized VP branches.
- Bots for Impression Management: During the sample period, bots were used mostly for impression management, including spreading news about leaders’ public events and projecting international statesmanship.The finding contrasts with other possible uses such as attacking opponents or choking off hashtags.
CONCLUSIONS
Political bots are part of a broader strategy in which automated accounts generate content and mimic real users. In Venezuela, bots produced little overall traffic but played a targeted role in political communication.
- Bots generate a very small proportion of traffic about Venezuelan political life.The study notes that prevalence and impact could differ during a political crisis or active election campaign.
- Less than 10 percent of all retweets come from bot-related platforms.Bots retweet Venezuelan politicians’ content, but the reported effect is subtle.
- The most active bots are used by Venezuela’s radical opposition.
- Bots more often impersonate political leaders, government agencies, and political parties than citizens.
- Bots promote innocuous political events more often than they attack opponents or spread misinformation.