Bots, social networks and politics in Brazil: a study on illegitimate interferences with the public debate on the web, risks to the democracy and the 2018 elections

Abstract

The study carried out by FGV/DAPP shows that bots was responsible for more than 10% of the interactions on Twitter during the presidential elections of 2014. During protests for the impeachment, these bot-provoked interactions represented more than 20% of the debate between supporters of Dilma Rousseff, who made significant use of this type of mechanism. Another example we analyzed shows that almost 20% of the interactions in the debate between users in favor of Aécio Neves during the second round of the 2014 elections was motivated by bots.