Sifting robotic from organic text: A natural language approach for detecting automation on Twitter
E. M. Clark, J. R. Williams, R. A. Galbraith, C. A. Jones, C. M. Danforth, and P. S. Dodds
Journal of Computational Science, 16, 1–7, 2016
Times cited: 127
Logline: We introduce a language-focused classification algorithm for sorting out who's a bot and who's not on social media. Our method works well and our focus on the structure of language itself is the big deal.
Abstract:
Twitter, a popular social media outlet, has evolved into a vast source of linguistic data, rich with opinion, sentiment, and discussion. Due to the increasing popularity of Twitter, its perceived potential for exerting social influence has led to the rise of a diverse community of automatons, commonly referred to as bots. These inorganic and semi-organic Twitter entities can range from the benevolent (e.g., weather-update bots, help-wanted-alert bots) to the malevolent (e.g., spamming messages, advertisements, or radical opinions). Existing detection algorithms typically leverage meta-data (time between tweets, number of followers, etc.) to identify robotic accounts. Here, we present a powerful classification scheme that exclusively uses the natural language text from organic users to provide a criterion for identifying accounts posting automated messages. Since the classifier operates on text alone, it is flexible and may be applied to any textual data beyond the Twitter-sphere.
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BibTeX:
@Article{clark2016a, author = {Clark, E. M. and Williams, J. R. and Galbraith, R. A. and Jones, C. A. and Danforth, C. M. and Dodds, P. S.}, title = {Sifting robotic from organic text: {A} natural language approach for detecting automation on {T}witter}, journal = {Journal of Computational Science}, year = {2016}, volume = {16}, pages = {1–7}, note = {Available at \href{https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04342}{https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04342}}, }