A study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh points out that celebrities and influencers have a greater distribution than bots to position trends or guide the conversation on a topic on social networks.
Experts explained that these results show that, contrary to popular belief, bots have minuscule influence in driving trends.
This conclusion was reached after analyzing data from 4,000 users on Twitter and how their messages were relevant to some 19 million accounts on seven different topics, including COVID-19, migration and climate change.
According to the experts, the accounts of celebrities or influencers with more than 10,000 followers had an influence of 70 percent in the universe of users analyzed. The researchers detailed that influence is understood as some type of interaction, such as responding to a tweet, quoting it, replicating it or looking at it.
In contrast, accounts operated by bots barely had 10 percent authority.
“Our analysis showed that bot interactions on users interested in a particular topic were minimal compared to influencer accounts,” the researchers comment in an extract from their study.
Despite their findings, they highlighted that the presence of bots does influence real users in some way, for example, by causing them to see content that is interacted with by a large group of automated accounts. After all, Twitter is prone to showing a user content that others have engaged with.
The study carried out by experts from the University of Edinburgh becomes relevant at a time when the influence of social networks is being questioned, both in political matters and in the health of each user, a problem that, by the way, is aggravated by the existence of influencers with questionable convictions.
Yes, bots have an influence, but it seems that there is nothing like human foolishness to spread misinformation.
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