Probing political bias on Twitter with drifter bots

May 1, 2022 5:36 PM

Announced by Indiana.edu (Sept 2021) "Our latest paper “Neutral bots probe political bias on social media” by Wen Chen, Diogo Pacheco, Kai-Cheng Yang & Fil Menczer just came out in Nature Communications. We find strong evidence of political bias on Twitter, but not as many think: (1) it is conservative rather than liberal bias, and (2) it results from user interactions (and abuse) rather than platform algorithms."

From the Nature link:

We find that the political alignment of the initial friend has a major impact on the popularity, social network structure, exposure to bots and low-credibility sources, and political alignment manifested in the actions of each drifter. However, we find no evidence that these outcomes can be attributed to platform bias. The insights provided by our study into the political currents of the Twitter’s information ecosystem can aid the public debate about how social media platforms shape people’s exposure to political information.

posted by hippybear (5 comments total)

surely this
posted by lalochezia at 5:55 PM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm sure this will result in calm quiet self-reflection ...
posted by Theta States at 6:26 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Twitter is garbage.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:48 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have the voice of my tankie dad in my head when I read things like this, so I'll counter with his argument: when the researchers decide that a certain news source is "low information" or "misinformation" they are exhibiting their centrist bias, because whatever supports the political center / status quo is considered credible and whatever challenges the status quo is considered "misinformation." So by using this rhetorical strategy you can make certain topics off limits to talk about and this is what people complain about when then complain about Twitter's "liberal bias."

But I think the "dense network of social connections" with a higher percentage of bots and higher likelihood to enter political echo chambers and see a lot of low-credibility news sources and lockstep talking points on the political Right is something we all can all recognize from our personal experiences with friends and family members... You have to be IN that echo chamber to not know this is happening, everyone else can clearly see it is happening. And we even have specific explanations for how it is happening: where the money is coming from and who is benefitting.
posted by subdee at 7:25 PM on May 1, 2022 [7 favorites]

Nice counterpoint to the item from the Atlantic yesterday, which studiously ignores the role of movement Conservatism in its 60-plus-years project to attain permanent minority rule and render elections irrelevant. Things would not be nearly so bad if there were not lots of resources and assiduous effort put into manufacturing artificial stupidity. And it is artificial more than structural.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:39 AM on May 2, 2022 [3 favorites]