Bots, #StrongerIn, and #Brexit: Computational Propaganda during the UK-EU Referendum

TL;DR

This study examines the role of political bots in the UK-EU referendum Twitter discourse, revealing their strategic influence, hashtag usage patterns, and disproportionate message contribution by a small subset of accounts.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of political bot activity during the UK referendum, highlighting their strategic role and message dominance in social media debates.

Findings

Hashtag usage favors leave supporters

Different perspectives show varying automation levels

Less than 1% of accounts produce nearly a third of messages

Abstract

Bots are social media accounts that automate interaction with other users, and they are active on the StrongerIn-Brexit conversation happening over Twitter. These automated scripts generate content through these platforms and then interact with people. Political bots are automated accounts that are particularly active on public policy issues, elections, and political crises. In this preliminary study on the use of political bots during the UK referendum on EU membership, we analyze the tweeting patterns for both human users and bots. We find that political bots have a small but strategic role in the referendum conversations: (1) the family of hashtags associated with the argument for leaving the EU dominates, (2) different perspectives on the issue utilize different levels of automation, and (3) less than 1 percent of sampled accounts generate almost a third of all the messages.