This is an oldie - but relevant to the current Trump cluster-f

[jpak]

Trump's Twitter debate lead was 'swelled by bots'

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37684418

More than four times as many tweets were made by automated accounts in favour of Donald Trump around the first US presidential debate as by those backing Hillary Clinton, a study says.

The bots exaggerated support for the Republican, it suggests, but Trump would still have won a higher number of supportive tweets even if they had not.

The authors warn such software has the capacity to "manipulate public opinion" and "muddy political issues".

The report has yet to be peer-reviewed.

<much more>

oops posted to soon was going to add this too.

If you thought the EU referendum involved skullduggery, the evidence suggests you’re right [VIDEO]

https://www.thecanary.co/2017/07/14/if-you-thought-the-eu-referendum-involved-skullduggery-this-report-proves-youre-right-video/

A new report looks at how automated computer programmes are manipulating public opinion through social media globally. It echoes the findings of an earlier study, which revealed how 2016 EU referendum voters may have been manipulated by ‘bots’. The implications are extraordinary. And voters deserve to know about it.

The use of bots in EU referendum

A recently published study [pdf] by Samuel C. Woolley and Philip N. Howard of the Oxford Internet Institute states:

Computational propaganda is now one of the most powerful tools against democracy. Social media firms may not be creating this nasty content, but they are the platform for it. They need to significantly redesign themselves if democracy is going to survive social media.

On the UK referendum, it says [pdf]:

During the 2016 UK Brexit referendum it was found that political bots played a small but strategic role in shaping Twitter conversations. The family of hashtags associated with the argument for leaving the EU dominated, while less than one percent of sampled accounts generated almost a third of all the messages.
The study referenced an earlier, 2016 report that illustrated how internet technology was used to try and influence the way people cast their vote for the referendum. This involved the deployment of ‘bots’ on Twitter.

<more>