Lumina- UFJF Periodicals Portal
“Political bots” are automated profiles programmed to act on social media with the aim of influencing political discussions, endorsing or defaming a candidate, disseminating campaign propaganda, creating noise in public debate, and interfering in the formation of users’ opinions. This article investigates how these accounts affected political conversation on Twitter during the first round of the 2016 municipal elections in Rio de Janeiro, contributing to the discussion of how bots can jeopardize online communication and affect the campaign and electoral results (HOWARD; WOOLLEY; CALO, 2018).
Using a grounded theory approach, we use observational netnography combined with discourse analysis to study the behavior of a set of bots on Twitter during the first round of the municipal elections in Rio de Janeiro. We detected 3,101 bots responsible for 19,915 tweets and classified our sample into three categories of bots based on the content of the tweets: user-generated bots, media spambots, and political bots. The latter were divided into two subcategories based on the type of discourse they disseminated on the network: “activists” and “agent provocateurs.”
The results of the research demonstrate that political bots represent a critical social problem because they fill a vacuum of political opinions by offering partisan positions to those who do not have them. We conclude that these automated accounts paved the way for Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in the 2018 presidential elections, supporting the then congressman and strengthening his presence on the networks.
How to cite: SANTINI, R. M.; SALLES, D.; TUCCI, G.; ESTRELLA, C. The forged militancy of bots: The 2016 municipal campaign as an electoral laboratory. Lumina, [S. l.], v. 15, no. 1, p. 124–142, 2021.
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