According to a recent study by Carnegie Mellon University, recently, malicious actors have been creating bots with the aim of causing false assumptions and discord, taking advantage of the global COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the study reports that more than half of the calls on Twitter for America to “reopen” and return to normality may come from bots. This news, which concerns America, is another example of disinformation. It is worth noting that the issue of disinformation caused strong reactions during the 2016 elections, while at the same time the question was raised about whether social media aims to bring true news to the surface or serves political or other purposes.
Since January, CMU researchers have collected 200 million Twitter posts related to COVID-19, with more than 60 percent of Twitter’s top 1,000 retweeters being bots. During the pandemic, bot activity has doubled , matching previous estimates based on natural disasters, crises and elections, said Kathleen Carley, a professor in the School of Computer Science’s Software Research Institute . The researchers say a number of factors may have contributed to the surge in activity, including the increased amount of free time during the pandemic. But the increase also appears to be linked to groups hiring companies to build bots. The global nature of the pandemic makes it an attractive target. Specifically, Carley said that various countries and interest groups see the pandemic as an opportunity to serve political interests and expediencies.
There are some indications of active bot activity, while determining what their activity serves is a major challenge, with the help of technology . Specifically, artificial intelligence processes account information and examines data such as the number of followers, the frequency of tweets and the network of references of an account. According to Carley, seeing tweets at a higher frequency than is humanly possible is an indication of bot activity. Among the misinformation spread by bots are supposed potential cures for COVID-19. However, bots are also associated with discussions regarding stay-at-home orders. Of course, a homemade bot programmed by a demagogue is different from a coordinated campaign . Unfortunately, there is significant coordination around calls to reopen America. For example, a large number of accounts have been created recently, which is indicative of a campaign. What you might call “cyborg accounts,” which could be humans with bot assistants, generate 66 percent of tweets, while accounts that are definitely bots generate 34 percent of tweets. But why is that? Conspiracy theories increase polarization into groups. That’s what many disinformation campaigns aim to do, Carley said. People have real concerns about health and the economy, so many are looking to create division. The increased polarization is expected to have significant consequences, affecting areas such as citizen behavior during election time and hostility toward ethnic groups. This sounds like a propaganda strategy and certainly fits with the Russian and Chinese playbooks, but it would take enormous resources and sources to substantiate it, Carley pointed out, noting that users should be extra careful with social media.
