Tracking Elections: our experience during the presidential elections in Ecuador
Daniel Riofrio, Anacaren Ruiz, Erin Sosebee, Qasim Raza, Adnan Bashir, and Jed Crandall

TL;DR
This paper presents a methodology and tools for tracking election-related social media activity, analyzing Ecuador's 2017 presidential elections, and detecting political bots influencing online campaigns.
Contribution
It introduces a comprehensive approach for collecting, analyzing, and identifying political bots in social media during elections, with a case study on Ecuador's 2017 elections.
Findings
High presence of followers may be artificially inflated by bots.
Over 30,000 political bots were detected and analyzed.
Bots were mainly used for propaganda supporting or opposing candidates.
Abstract
The world's digital transformation has influenced not only the way we do business, but also the way we perform daily activities. In fact, the past Presidential elections in the United States as well as those in Great Britain (Brexit) and in Colombia (peace agreement referendum) are proof that social media play an important part in modern politics. In fact, this digital political field is filled by political movements and political candidates looking for popular support (number of followers), regular citizens' messages discussing social issues (trending topics flooding social media), or even political propaganda in favor or against politicians or political movements (advertisement). One of the issues with social media in this era is the presence of automatic accounts (bots) that artificially fill accounts with fake followers, create false trending topics, and share fake news or simply…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSpam and Phishing Detection · Advanced Malware Detection Techniques · Misinformation and Its Impacts
