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Active, aggressive, but to little avail: characterizing bot activity during the 2020 Singaporean elections

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Uyheng

    (Carnegie Melon University)

  • Lynnette Hui Xian Ng

    (Carnegie Melon University)

  • Kathleen M. Carley

    (Carnegie Melon University)

Abstract

Digital disinformation presents a challenging problem for democracies worldwide, especially in times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. In countries like Singapore, legislative efforts to quell fake news constitute relatively new and understudied contexts for understanding local information operations. This paper presents a social cybersecurity analysis of the 2020 Singaporean elections, which took place at the height of the pandemic and after the recent passage of an anti-fake news law. Harnessing a dataset of 240,000 tweets about the elections, we found that 26.99% of participating accounts were likely to be bots, responsible for a larger proportion of bot tweets than the election in 2015. Textual analysis further showed that the detected bots used simpler and more abusive second-person language, as well as hashtags related to COVID-19 and voter activity—pointing to aggressive tactics potentially fuelling online hostility and questioning the legitimacy of the polls. Finally, bots were associated with larger, less dense, and less echo chamber-like communities, suggesting efforts to participate in larger, mainstream conversations. However, despite their distinct narrative and network maneuvers, bots generally did not hold significant influence throughout the social network. Hence, although intersecting concerns of political conflict during a global pandemic may promptly raise the possibility of online interference, we quantify both the efforts and limits of bot-fueled disinformation in the 2020 Singaporean elections. We conclude with several implications for digital disinformation in times of crisis, in the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Uyheng & Lynnette Hui Xian Ng & Kathleen M. Carley, 2021. "Active, aggressive, but to little avail: characterizing bot activity during the 2020 Singaporean elections," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 324-342, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:comaot:v:27:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s10588-021-09332-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10588-021-09332-1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Chengcheng Shao & Pik-Mai Hui & Lei Wang & Xinwen Jiang & Alessandro Flammini & Filippo Menczer & Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, 2018. "Anatomy of an online misinformation network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-23, April.
    3. Kathleen M. Carley, 2020. "Social cybersecurity: an emerging science," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 365-381, December.
    4. Beth Simone Noveck, 2017. "Five hacks for digital democracy," Nature, Nature, vol. 544(7650), pages 287-289, April.
    5. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
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