WASHINGTON: As US election day approaches, “Twitter bombs” are expected to fly as part of efforts to swing votes in a close race.
The “bombs,” a form of spam, are unsolicited Twitter responses which are re-tweeted with the help of automated computer programs, or “bots”, to get maximum distribution.
These are examples of cyber tricks which could surface in the final days of the US election campaign from candidates or, more likely, outside groups supporting a candidate or cause.
The “bomb” technique is as old as Twitter, and is similar to e-mail spam. Both can be used for commercial or political causes.
Experts say it leads those receiving the messages to believe there is a groundswell, when in fact, the trend is being manipulated by those generating the message.
“This is a new way of propagating information or misinformation,” said Panagiotis Metaxas, a Wellesley College computer scientist who studies social media.
“I suspect this will happen close to the final days of the election. With social media you can propagate information or misinformation fast.”
Metaxas, who co-authored a report on the subject in Science Magazine, said that even though falsehoods can be debunked, “if you launch it close enough to the election you can keep enough confusion to last a couple of days.”
Mexatas studied a case in the 2010 race for US Senate in Massachusetts, in which a “tweet factory” created in the final days of the campaign produced 1,000 tweets, which ended up being re-tweeted 60,000 times.
The campaign came from a conservative group in Iowa, in support of Republican Scott Brown, who eventually won the race.
“I cannot tell if it made a measurable difference in the election,” Metaxas said. “But in a close race decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes, this could be a factor.”
“In times of political elections, the stakes are high, and advocates may try to support their cause by active manipulation of social media,” Metaxas added.
In politics, Twitter manipulation can multiply messages from one person or group, making it appear to be a grassroots movements, a phenomenon known as “astroturfing.”
“These are nefarious tactics,” said Jeanette Castillo, a professor of communication at Florida State University who follows new media.
But Castillo said that over the long run, these efforts may be misguided, because it can hurt a candidate’s “social media capital.”
“These kind of tactics may be able to influence trends on Twitter, but I think they represent a basic miscalculation,” she said. “Bots can’t vote... or volunteer, or talk to their co-workers, family and friends.”
Filippo Menczer, head of Indiana University’s Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, has set up a research project called “Truthy” in an effort to separate real groundswells from fake ones.
“We try to find out how it is that some information goes viral and some does not,” he said. “Fake accounts can give the impression of a grassroots movement when in fact it is just the coordinated effort of one person or one group.”
Menczer’s team uncovered a case in 2010 in which 20,000 tweets originated from two Twitter accounts in an effort to drum up support for Republican congressional candidates, and frequently mentioned House GOP leader John Boehner.
AFP
