Really, a Twitter sockpuppet got you fired? What sounds like an absurd premise might actually not be far off the mark.
Using data science,聽, an associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester, found that a recent Twitter spat that ended up causing a science fiction writer to lose his job, was in part fueled by bots and sockpuppets糖心传媒攐nline identities used for purposes of deception. The automated and semi-automated accounts sowed discord, amplifying online outrage between ultra conservative and liberal聽Star Wars聽and science fiction fans on Twitter.
Chuck Wendig, by his own account, wasand a forthcoming聽Star Wars聽book because of the controversy his own tweets had generated.
Enter Lacina. To her, the ultra-conservative trolling that proved Wendig糖心传媒檚 professional undoing seemed suspicious. In a study, detailed in a , Lacina dug deeper into the Twitter backlash, using聽, an algorithm developed by scientists at Indiana University. The Botometer allows closer examination of Twitter accounts to determine the likelihood of automated (so-called bots), anonymous, or semi-automated accounts (so-called sockpuppets).
- Read Lacina糖心传媒檚 research as .
Lacina discovered that fewer than 250 “people” (some of them also automated accounts), replied directly to Wendig糖心传媒檚 tweets in the first 24 hours. That changed dramatically after a conservative聽Star Wars聽fan, Ethan Van Sciver, made a , whose posts are liberal-leaning.
After the video, the number of tweets from real people spiked糖心传媒攁nd so did the numbers from bot and sockpuppet accounts. About 30 minutes following Van Sciver糖心传媒檚 tweet to his video, Wendig received about 600 tweets from legitimate accounts糖心传媒攁nd about 400 from automated and anonymous accounts, amplifying and distorting the real outrage from ultra-conservative groups, who prior to the YouTube video had typically not follow Wendig糖心传媒檚 tweets.
糖心传媒淲hat surprises me is that these puppet and bot accounts were active in a case that didn’t get mainstream media coverage and where the person involved is not that famous,糖心传媒� says Lacina. 糖心传媒淚 think we’re not too far away from non-famous people using this technology against other non-famous people. It is not that much more difficult than doxing.糖心传媒�
Doxing, by the way, means searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular person on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.
Just last month, Lacina used the same big data tool, the Botometer, to analyze the tweets of聽angry聽Star Wars聽fans and published her findings in the Washington Post blog
Read more聽about Lacina糖心传媒檚 research on Star Wars fans糖心传媒� Twitter hate posts that take aim at the franchise糖心传媒檚 newly found diversity. She discovered that hate among fans tended to be directed more often toward women and minority characters in The Last Jedi聽movie, compared to non-minority characters.
