Why Botter: How Pro-Government Bots Fight Opposition in Russia

There is abundant anecdotal evidence that nondemocratic regimes are harnessing new digital technologies known as social media bots to facilitate policy goals. However, few previous attempts have been made systematically analyze the use of aimed at a domestic audience in autocratic regimes. We develop two alternative theoretical frameworks for predicting pro-regime bots: one which focuses on bot deployment response offline protest and other online protest. then test empirical implications these with an original collection Twitter data generated by Russian pro-government bots. find opposition activities produce stronger reactions from than protests. Our results provide lower bound effects Twittersphere highlight importance detection study political communication