According to a new scientific study, the online debate over the health benefits of e-cigarettes is being driven largely by automated “bots” in social media accounts.
San Diego State University (SDSU) researchers compiled 194,000 geocoded tweets from across the US posted between October 2015 and February 2016. A random sample of 973 tweets were analyzed for their sentiment and source. Results found that more than 70% of the tweets came from automated accounts, or “bots”, and that most of them carried a positive message about vaping.
“We are not talking about accounts made to represent organizations, or a business or a cause,” said Lourdes S. Martinez, an assistant professor in SDSU’s School of Communication and the lead researcher in the study. “These accounts are made to look like regular people. This raises the question: To what extent is the public health discourse online being driven by robot accounts?” he asked.