Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign
Bots (social robots) are computer programs that replicate human behavior in online social networks. They are either fully automated or semi-automated, and their use makes online activism vulnerable to manipulation. This study examines the existence of social robots in the #FeesMustFall movement by c...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2022-03-01
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| Series: | Informatics |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9709/9/1/21 |
| _version_ | 1797470765636911104 |
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| author | Yaseen Khan Surendra Thakur Obiseye Obiyemi Emmanuel Adetiba |
| author_facet | Yaseen Khan Surendra Thakur Obiseye Obiyemi Emmanuel Adetiba |
| author_sort | Yaseen Khan |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Bots (social robots) are computer programs that replicate human behavior in online social networks. They are either fully automated or semi-automated, and their use makes online activism vulnerable to manipulation. This study examines the existence of social robots in the #FeesMustFall movement by conducting a scientific investigation into whether social bots were present in the form of Twitter bots and cyborgs. A total of 576,823 tweets posted between 15 October 2015 and 10 April 2017 were cleaned, with 490,449 tweets analyzed for 90,783 unique persons. Three separate approaches were used to screen out suspicious bot and cyborg activity, supplemented by the DeBot team’s methodology. User 1 and User 2, two of the 90,783 individuals, were recognized as bots or cyborgs in the study and contributed 22,413 (4.57 percent) of the 490,449 tweets. This confirms the existence of bots throughout the campaign, which aided in the #FeesMustFall’s amplification on Twitter, complicating sentiment analysis and invariably making it the most popular and lengthiest hashtag campaign in Africa, particularly at the time of data collection. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T19:40:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a27808b9980148ee9a9e349153e567e7 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2227-9709 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T19:40:39Z |
| publishDate | 2022-03-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Informatics |
| spelling | doaj.art-a27808b9980148ee9a9e349153e567e72023-11-24T01:40:54ZengMDPI AGInformatics2227-97092022-03-01912110.3390/informatics9010021Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall CampaignYaseen Khan0Surendra Thakur1Obiseye Obiyemi2Emmanuel Adetiba3KZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South AfricaKZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South AfricaKZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South AfricaDepartment of Electrical and Information Engineering, Covenant University, Ota 1023, NigeriaBots (social robots) are computer programs that replicate human behavior in online social networks. They are either fully automated or semi-automated, and their use makes online activism vulnerable to manipulation. This study examines the existence of social robots in the #FeesMustFall movement by conducting a scientific investigation into whether social bots were present in the form of Twitter bots and cyborgs. A total of 576,823 tweets posted between 15 October 2015 and 10 April 2017 were cleaned, with 490,449 tweets analyzed for 90,783 unique persons. Three separate approaches were used to screen out suspicious bot and cyborg activity, supplemented by the DeBot team’s methodology. User 1 and User 2, two of the 90,783 individuals, were recognized as bots or cyborgs in the study and contributed 22,413 (4.57 percent) of the 490,449 tweets. This confirms the existence of bots throughout the campaign, which aided in the #FeesMustFall’s amplification on Twitter, complicating sentiment analysis and invariably making it the most popular and lengthiest hashtag campaign in Africa, particularly at the time of data collection.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9709/9/1/21#FeesMustFallsoftware robotssocial robotsbotscyborgs |
| spellingShingle | Yaseen Khan Surendra Thakur Obiseye Obiyemi Emmanuel Adetiba Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign Informatics #FeesMustFall software robots social robots bots cyborgs |
| title | Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign |
| title_full | Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign |
| title_fullStr | Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign |
| title_full_unstemmed | Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign |
| title_short | Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign |
| title_sort | identification of bots and cyborgs in the feesmustfall campaign |
| topic | #FeesMustFall software robots social robots bots cyborgs |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9709/9/1/21 |
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