How Do Political Bots, Which Are Not Even People, Affect Our Voting Behavior? (Propaganda, Bandwagon Effect)

Election Day is tomorrow. The social media bots, appearing in force, infest social media with astonishing amounts of misinformation, inaccurate accusations, wild insults, and faked pictures. There are thousands and thousands of them. It’s like 2016 all over again, when Russian bots and trolls may have exerted a decisive effect on a very close election. A bot (techspeak for “robot”) is a computer program or automated protocol that has been instructed to act like a human being on the Internet. Bots frequently post on Facebook, Twitter, and readers’ comments pages. Every month, the bots become smarter and learn to act more like human beings. Many of them come from troll farms in Russia, Southeast Asia, or, in fact, anywhere that can supply low-priced computer experts.

Real people on social media often angrily protest: “No one, especially a computer, tells me how to vote.” That, as we’ll see, is true in some ways and false in others. So, how do these bots affect us?

Most bots that post on my social media feed are pro-Republican, pro-Trump, and nasty. They post pictures of Donald Trump dressed in Crusader armor and swinging a sword at Muslim invaders, Barack Obama with his skin darkened and pixelated to make him look scary and especially African, Hillary Clinton Photoshopped to look old and angry, and the migrant caravan that, although still almost 1000 miles away, is supposedly attacking Texas. Bots post fearsome reports of a parade of armed New Black Panthers marching for Democrats, neglecting to mention that there were only five Panthers, only three of whom were (lawfully) armed. Bots often retweet posts from fake news sites and hoaxes. They reproduce images from meme generators. (Yes, if you are completely unscrupulous, and it seems that many people are, you can find free websites that will generate hateful images to post on your Twitter or Facebook accounts.) Bots can retweet these memes endlessly. Other bots pretend to be Democrats and discourage people from voting. Since high voting turnout favors the Democrats (see below), that was cunning (albeit evil).

To understand how bots can persuade us, we need to understand, as political communication experts have known ever since the 1948 Elmira, New York study, that most people vote straight party tickets. Even people who call themselves independent usually vote straight party tickets. As we get closer to Election Day, people tend to push the issues aside and find one excuse or another to vote for their favorite political party. In fact, if you know somebody’s party affiliation, ethnicity, and social and economic status, you can predict how that person will vote with better than 90% accuracy. So, how is it even possible that political persuaders (including soulless bots) can affect elections? The answer is voter turnout.

In his landmark book The Political Persuaders, political scientist Dan Nimmo showed that one of the most important ways that political campaigns make a difference is to influence voter turnout. Statistically, many more American voters identify as Democrats than as Republicans. In theory, the Democrats should win every election by a landslide. The reason they do not is that Republicans turn out more faithfully than Democrats. And, if Democratic turnout increases – as it apparently is in the 2018 midterm elections – the only way for Republicans to counter that is to increase their own voter turnout.

Most of us were taught in civics classes to study the issues, examine the candidates’ qualifications, and make an informed decision. That sounds nice, but hardly anyone does that. Instead, people find out what issues their favorite political party believes and mindlessly agree with them. If this requires voters to change their opinions about the issues every few years, most people are happy to do that. That’s why, two short years ago, the federal budget deficit terrified Republicans. But President Donald Trump signed a massive tax cut, exploding the deficit, and so, today, few Republicans care about the (much larger) deficit. When Bill Clinton was president, Republicans thought it was horrible for an adulterer to sit in the White House. But President Trump’s adulterous bedroom romps don’t bother them enough to affect their votes. That is how voters think. Political party loyalty comes first, and people adjust their issue beliefs and moral values to accommodate their favorite party. (Are Democrats different in this respect? No.)

Back to the bots. Automated social media posts spread vast quantities of nonsense, garbage, rubbish, and filth. Computers are machines, and machines have no moral standards. Troll farms in Russia and Thailand could not care less about Americans’ gun rights, the migrant caravan, Social Security, Medicare, or anything else that American voters want or fear. For the most part, all the bots do is to regurgitate information and images that other media outlets have already published. The bots persuade people only because they stir up partisan loyalty. If Fox News already has you a little angry about the migrant caravan, seeing dozens of social media posts with scary pictures and inaccurate information about the caravan could anger you even more, and thus make you a little more likely to show up and vote. If you already think that Barack Obama is scary, looking at scary pictures of him might make you a little bit more afraid, and thus a little more likely to vote. For such a superficial emotion, fear is a powerful short-term motivator.

Trolls are becoming much cleverer at inventing bots that act like people. Their profile pictures are faked, but they are faked much better than they were even a year ago. Bots often post bios that make them sound like loyal, conservative Americans: “MAGA, American Dad, #patriot, #veteran,” or “Jesus is Lord, #MAGA, Save America, Gun Rights.” Whatever. The bios are fakes, because bots aren’t human beings, and therefore are neither veterans nor Christians.

By pretending to be people, and by pretending to be not just any people, but highly moral, righteously angry people, the bots create a bandwagon effect. This is a well-known propaganda method: if you think that the caravan terrifies many other people, then you can be terrified about the caravan, too. If you know that your views are not politically correct – or, worse, if you worry that your opinions might be unworthy or immoral – it makes you feel better to know that a whole bunch of other people agree with you. If you are worried that President Trump’s policies are un-Christian, it can make you feel better to see Christians on the Internet who support President Trump. Unfortunately, thousands of the people who are on board with you are not people at all: they’re just computer programs.

Few people can tell the difference between a person and a bot. If you’re very ambitious, there are computer programs that will identify bots in your social media feed. That’s a great idea, but who has time for that? There are some easier tricks. First, few real people, even computer addicts, generate more than 40 or 50 Twitter or Facebook posts a day. An account that has produced 150,000 posts in nine months is almost certainly not a human being. Second, look for content that is highly impersonal. Finally, few real social media accounts are single-minded. My own Twitter and Facebook posts include some political comments, but I also post about my students’ accomplishments, the weather, my lawn, community events, my old high schools, and other topics that pop into my mind. In contrast, since they are not human beings, most political bots are relentlessly single-minded.

And that, in a nutshell, is why bots are persuasive: their purpose is not to change your mind but to motivate you. The troll farms give you no useful information, but do give you an incentive to get off the couch and go to the voting booth. The bots are gigantic frauds, but the world is full of suckers ready to be conned.

Anyway, if you are a registered voter and US citizen, please vote tomorrow as your conscience tells you. And ignore the bots. Thanks.