Oxford Internet Institute

Philip Howard has a fancy name for partisan election bots. He calls them “computational propaganda” — and lately, he sees them a lot.

On Oct. 14, the Oxford University professor released a paper dissecting bot activity after the first American presidential debate, finding that — among other things — Donald Trump benefited disproportionately. Wednesday, he released a report on the second presidential debate that confirms and expands upon the findings of the first: namely, that propaganda bots are active on both sides, and that the pro-Trump accounts are worse.

Read more in The Washington Post.

Note: This post was originally published on the Political Bots research blog on 21 October 2016 9:29 am. It might have been updated since then in its original location. The post gives the views of the author(s), and not necessarily the position of the Oxford Internet Institute.