# The role of bot squads in the political propaganda on Twitter

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.12687 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12687/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Demystifying Misconceptions in Social Bots Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17251/) (2023)
- [On the efficacy of old features for the detection of new bots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19635/) (2025)
- [From Perils to Possibilities: Understanding how Human (and AI) Biases affect Online Fora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14298/) (2024)
- [Design and analysis of tweet-based election models for the 2021 Mexican legislative election](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00626/) (2023)
- [Social Convos: Capturing Agendas and Emotions on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15571/) (2024)
- [Evaluating the Propensity of Generative AI for Producing Harmful Disinformation During the 2024 US Election Cycle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06120/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Social Media are nowadays the privileged channel for information spreading and news checking. Unexpectedly for most of the users, automated accounts, also known as social bots, contribute more and more to this process of news spreading. Using Twitter as a benchmark, we consider the traffic exchanged, over one month of observation, on a specific topic, namely the migration flux from Northern Africa to Italy. We measure the significant traffic of tweets only, by implementing an entropy-based null model that discounts the activity of users and the virality of tweets. Results show that social bots play a central role in the exchange of significant content. Indeed, not only the strongest hubs have a number of bots among their followers higher than expected, but furthermore a group of them, that can be assigned to the same political tendency, share a common set of bots as followers. The retwitting activity of such automated accounts amplifies the presence on the platform of the hubs' messages.