Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events.
The advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still an open challenge. Here we show that online social interacti...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2019-01-01
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| Series: | PLoS ONE |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214210 |
| _version_ | 1797661363739295744 |
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| author | Massimo Stella Marco Cristoforetti Manlio De Domenico |
| author_facet | Massimo Stella Marco Cristoforetti Manlio De Domenico |
| author_sort | Massimo Stella |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still an open challenge. Here we show that online social interactions during a massive voting event can be used to build an accurate map of real-world political parties and electoral ranks for Italian elections in 2018. We provide evidence that information flow and collective attention are often driven by a special class of highly influential users, that we name "augmented humans", who exploit thousands of automated agents, also known as bots, for enhancing their online influence. We show that augmented humans generate deep information cascades, to the same extent of news media and other broadcasters, while they uniformly infiltrate across the full range of identified groups. Digital augmentation represents the cyber-physical counterpart of the human desire to acquire power within social systems. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T18:44:26Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-174c8535aa434ab59ddb018dae6bf865 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1932-6203 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T18:44:26Z |
| publishDate | 2019-01-01 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | PLoS ONE |
| spelling | doaj.art-174c8535aa434ab59ddb018dae6bf8652023-10-12T05:31:37ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032019-01-01145e021421010.1371/journal.pone.0214210Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events.Massimo StellaMarco CristoforettiManlio De DomenicoThe advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still an open challenge. Here we show that online social interactions during a massive voting event can be used to build an accurate map of real-world political parties and electoral ranks for Italian elections in 2018. We provide evidence that information flow and collective attention are often driven by a special class of highly influential users, that we name "augmented humans", who exploit thousands of automated agents, also known as bots, for enhancing their online influence. We show that augmented humans generate deep information cascades, to the same extent of news media and other broadcasters, while they uniformly infiltrate across the full range of identified groups. Digital augmentation represents the cyber-physical counterpart of the human desire to acquire power within social systems.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214210 |
| spellingShingle | Massimo Stella Marco Cristoforetti Manlio De Domenico Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. PLoS ONE |
| title | Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. |
| title_full | Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. |
| title_fullStr | Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. |
| title_full_unstemmed | Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. |
| title_short | Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events. |
| title_sort | influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214210 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT massimostella influenceofaugmentedhumansinonlineinteractionsduringvotingevents AT marcocristoforetti influenceofaugmentedhumansinonlineinteractionsduringvotingevents AT manliodedomenico influenceofaugmentedhumansinonlineinteractionsduringvotingevents |