Related papers: What is a Social Media Bot? A Global Comparison of…
Social botnets have become an important phenomenon on social media. There are many ways in which social bots can disrupt or influence online discourse, such as, spam hashtags, scam twitter users, and astroturfing. In this paper we…
Recent research brought awareness of the issue of bots on social media and the significant risks of mass manipulation of public opinion in the context of political discussion. In this work, we leverage Twitter to study the discourse during…
This paper gives an overview of impersonation bots that generate output in one, or possibly, multiple modalities. We also discuss rapidly advancing areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence that could lead to frighteningly…
So-called 'social bots' have garnered a lot of attention lately. Previous research showed that they attempted to influence political events such as the Brexit referendum and the US presidential elections. It remains, however, somewhat…
Social bots play a significant role in many online social networks (OSN) as they imitate human behavior. This fact raises difficult questions about their capabilities and potential risks. Given the recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI),…
Social bots remain a major vector for spreading disinformation on social media and a menace to the public. Despite the progress made in developing multiple sophisticated social bot detection algorithms and tools, bot detection remains a…
For more than a decade now, academicians and online platform administrators have been studying solutions to the problem of bot detection. Bots are computer algorithms whose use is far from being benign: malicious bots are purposely created…
This study presents a review of research on social media bot detection. Social media bots are used by political and criminal actors for mass distribution of political messages, as well as rumors, conspiracy theories, and other forms of…
Thanks to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, people can know facts and events that otherwise would have been silenced. However, social media significantly contribute also to fast spreading biased and false news while targeting specific…
In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the number of bots online, varying from Web crawlers for search engines, to chatbots for online customer service, spambots on social media, and content-editing bots in online collaboration…
Social bots have become an important component of online social media. Deceptive bots, in particular, can manipulate online discussions of important issues ranging from elections to public health, threatening the constructive exchange of…
As our reliance on social media platforms and web services increase day by day, exploiters view these platforms as an opportunity to manipulate our thoughts ad actions. These platforms have become an open playground for social bot accounts.…
While social media are a key source of data for computational social science, their ease of manipulation by malicious actors threatens the integrity of online information exchanges and their analysis. In this Chapter, we focus on malicious…
Computational propaganda deploys social or political bots to try to shape, steer and manipulate online public discussions and influence decisions. Collective behaviour of populations of social bots has not been yet widely studied, though…
In recent years, social bots have been using increasingly more sophisticated, challenging detection strategies. While many approaches and features have been proposed, social bots evade detection and interact much like humans making it…
Nowadays, social media represent persuasive tools that have been progressively weaponized to affect people's beliefs, spread manipulative narratives, and sow conflicts along divergent factions. Software-controlled accounts (i.e., bots) are…
Online Social Networks have revolutionized how we consume and share information, but they have also led to a proliferation of content not always reliable and accurate. One particular type of social accounts is known to promote unreputable…
Online Social Media represent a pervasive source of information able to reach a huge audience. Sadly, recent studies show how online social bots (automated, often malicious accounts, populating social networks and mimicking genuine users)…
Bots, software-controlled accounts that operate on social media, have been used to manipulate and deceive. We studied the characteristics and activity of bots around major political events, including elections in various countries. In this…
The increased relevance of social media in our daily life has been accompanied by efforts to manipulate online conversations and opinions. Deceptive social bots -- automated or semi-automated accounts designed to impersonate humans -- have…