This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Fake News: Why the West is Blind to Russia’s Propaganda Today
31 January 2017
Soviet Propaganda Poster
Our research was covered in the Sydney Morning Herald.
On social media, bots (short for robots) are small programs that automate the posting of and reply to messages. Political campaigns in democracies have used bots in recent years, not always achieving the effects they desired. But last year, they began to be exploited in a much more directed manner toward Western election campaigns. For example, before Britain’s referendum on European Union membership in June, about 1 per cent of Twitter profiles generated one-third of traffic on the issue, according to the Computational Propaganda project at the Oxford Internet Institute.”Most of those were bot accounts,” says Samuel Woolley, director of research of the project. “They were tweeting automatically and they generated tons of content.