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Fake It ‘Til You Make It: A Natural Experiment to Identify European Politicians’ Benefit from Twitter Bots

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  • SILVA, BRUNO CASTANHO
  • PROKSCH, SVEN-OLIVER

Abstract

Social media giants stand accused of facilitating illegitimate interference with democratic political processes around the world. Part of this problem are malicious bots: automated fake accounts passing as humans. However, we lack a systematic understanding of which politicians benefit most from them. We tackle this question by leveraging a Twitter purge of malicious bots in July 2018 and a new dataset on Twitter activity by all members of national parliaments (MPs) in the EU in 2018. Since users had no influence on how and when Twitter purged millions of bots, it serves as an exogenous intervention to investigate whether some parties or politicians lost more followers. We find drops in follower counts concentrated among radical right politicians, in particular those with strong anti-EU discourse. This is the first set of empirical, causally identified evidence supporting the idea that the radical right benefits more from malicious bots than other party families.

Suggested Citation

  • Silva, Bruno Castanho & Proksch, Sven-Oliver, 2021. "Fake It ‘Til You Make It: A Natural Experiment to Identify European Politicians’ Benefit from Twitter Bots," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 316-322, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:316-322_21
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    Cited by:

    1. David Hartmann & Sonja Mei Wang & Lena Pohlmann & Bettina Berendt, 2025. "A systematic review of echo chamber research: comparative analysis of conceptualizations, operationalizations, and varying outcomes," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 1-59, May.
    2. Yulia Evsyukova & Felix Rusche & Wladislaw Mill, 2025. "LinkedOut? A Field Experiment on Discrimination in Job Network Formation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 140(1), pages 283-334.

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