A study to be published soon by Brown University has found that Twitter bots have had a “substantial impact” in amplifying the messages of climate denialists.
Bots are computer programs that can masquerade as humans to post or send messages on social media. Researchers discovered tweets posted by bots created the impression there was a high level of climate change denial. The paper detailing the finds has not yet been published and was first reported by The Guardian newspaper.
The research team analysed 6.5 million tweets from the period surrounding President Donald Trump’s June 2017 announcement that he was removing the United States from the Paris climate accord.
The finding showed 25% of tweets on climate change were likely posted by bots. Most of those tweets centred on denials of global warming or rejections of climate science.
Everyone knows Twitter has a bot problem, but the prevalence as shown in this study is what had the authors worried. Bots were responsible for 38% of all tweets mentioning “fake science” and 28% of tweets about Exxon. When looking at tweets in support of science and climate activism, the authors found that just 5% of them were from bots.
Auto-generated content by itself isn’t necessarily bad unless it reaches and influences many people. Although the authors couldn’t definitively identify who was behind the bot accounts or how much influence they had, they did discover that many had tens of thousands of followers.
Accounts like these tend to follow each other and circulate false information in echo chambers. Regardless of topic, researchers have shown that people keep believing and spreading this misinformation due to their perception that there is a valid alternative opinion.
Stephan Lewandowsky, a co-author from the University of Bristol, adds that “the more denialist trolls are out there, the more likely people will think that there is a diversity of opinion and hence will weaken their support for climate science.” It’s unclear whether these bots have affected politicians into enacting or repealing any policies, but there is a growing concern that they are beginning to influence government officials.
