Professor Philip Howard
Professor of Internet Studies
Philip N. Howard is a professor of sociology, information, and international affairs. He is Director of the Programme on Democracy and Technology, and is a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College.
Published on
18 Oct 2016
18 Oct 2016
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The project’s research into the 2016 US election was covered in Newsweek.
Donald Trump’s use of fourth grade-level language may be a powerful rhetorical tool, but his linguistic austerity has opened him up to a modern form of mockery: the Twitter bot.
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It is not the first instance of Twitter bots appearing in the build up to the presidential elections. A recent investigation revealed that automated accounts in favor of Trump were a form of of “computational propaganda.”
The study, by Oxford University professor Philip Howard, found that bots backing Trump sent out more than four times as many tweets than those supporting Hillary Clinton during the first presidential debate.
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