The Presence of Political Bots on Twitter during the COVID-19 Crisis in Spain

ABSTRACT

The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the decree of the State of Alarm in Spain and a severe home confinement that was softened in phases of de-escalation. During this period, social networks were used as a discussion tool. With this research we intend to find out if artificial intelligence tools were used in the political debate on Twitter. To achieve this, algorithms that determine the presence of bots in the conversation, their communicative roles and their relationship with the main political parties were applied. The results show that disinformation campaigns were created by bots with the aim of manipulating public opinion. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR]