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
17 Nov 2016
17 Nov 2016
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The project’s research on the 2016 US election was covered in Bloomberg.
Donald Trump’s supporters made a surprisingly strong showing on Nov. 8, and not just at polling places in the rust belt. Twitter bots accounted for nearly a quarter of all postings that included hashtags related to the election, according to an analysis by researchers at Corvinus University, Oxford, and the University of Washington published on Thursday. They found that pro-Trump hashtags got five times as much traffic from automated accounts as hashtags that were pro-Hillary Clinton.
“The use of automated accounts was deliberate and strategic throughout the election, most clearly with pro-Trump campaigners and programmers who carefully adjusted the timing of content production during the debates, strategically colonized pro-Clinton hashtags, and then disabled automated activities after election day,” the researchers wrote.
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