User:TheFranklyAcute/sandbox

I read the article "E-participation". This article is about people interacting with their government. this is closely related to e-government where a government provides information to their constituents through updates via mass media. This is relevant to my article because I am researching the effects of automated Bots on legislation and election. The article a question appears to be neutral however they solely focus on European affairs. The article also has a few citations however it is unclear as to what citations they are using in the article. For example they have a reference section with 5 citations and then they have a notes section 7 citations. Despite this the majority of their citation seem to come from reliable sources either from edu and eu websites or from studies conducted by researchers. The studies in question range from those conducted in 2003 to 2015. The talk page seems to be primarily among one person listing edits that they have made. This article is within two Wikipedia projects one being WikiProject internet and the other WikiProject politics this article is rated C for both projects.

Artlces to edit:

e-participation

clickbait

During the 5 week period I assessed the effects of social media bots on elections and our legislative system within the US. I was specifically interested on how they are used to direct the conversation on current events and proposed legislation; However, due to the tumultuous news events that happened in the past five weeks, I had to evaluate popular news stories like the Nunez Memo and the Douglas High Shooting. Despite this, these events expanded my initial inquiry and I became interested in the potential psychological effect of social media bots on users. When looking for articles related to my topic I had the expectation that the media should at least adhere to factual events and offer their opinions or the opinions of professionals. Because social media bots are technical in nature I didn’t expect them to understand how they function, only the effects of their presence and the implications of continued existence.

During the first two weeks of the project, there was a debate on whether bots actually existed and what events they were involved in. The more liberal alternative media sites were certain that they existed and were directly involved in certain social media movements like #releasethememo. There were even a news organization- hamilton 86- that tracked confirmed bots to document their activity in relation to current events. However, the liberal media put an emphasis on bot activity and right wing movements and ideas. In doing so, they implicitly undermined the sentiments of real people by citing bots as a primary mechanism to achieve their goals. Another things that these news sources didn’t seem to provide was raw data, which put into question how well they understood bots. The more right wing media was initially split on the existence of politically motivated bots, and they called out legislation that could ban them as active censorship. Many of these media outlets expressed how American citizens were the primary supporters behind social media movements and that bots are a scapegoat- and sometimes a strawman. They even brought up the existence of organizations who acted in DNC’s interest- like Clean the Record- that actively twisted information on the internet to fit a narrative. They felt that this was far more damaging that social media bots and the supposed “Russian bot farms”. I believe that all of these sentiments are completely valid and should be discussed more on mainstream media; however,some of these news sites are not critical of their own ideology and seem determined to create a one-sided narrative - like some liberal news outlets.

In the next week, there were stories that detailed the psychological effects of bots. News sites like PBS brought in a researcher who focused on how the nature of social media is advantageous to bots since it heavily relies on numbers rather than significant ideas. Other news sites, like Reason, expressed the frustration about being called a bot and how their opinions are dehumanized and effectively censored. I found both perspectives to be equally valuable in the overall discussion; I knew that If we were to propose any laws against social media bots, we would have to be sensitive to these nuances.

In the Final two weeks, news sites began discussing bots in relation to Douglas High School shooting and began to cumulatively evaluate bots in the news thus far. It was here where I discovered the articles that described how bots are inflated in numbers and began to dissect how their activity is insignificant compared to the total activity of the social media sites that they operate in. This article forced me to re-evaluate how I viewed mainstream media that did not use numbers to support their claims (because the actual numbers might betray their narrative). The other news article, from the right leaning PJ Media, accepted the existence of bots, and expressed anger over the ineptitude of social media companies for allowing bots to advertise fake news and conspiracies.

Overall, the media did not meet all of my expectations. Many of the news sites that I got my articles from, both mainstream and alternative, had news articles that had inflated data or sensationalist elements- something that I hope will be minimized once people gain a better understanding of my topic. However, they were valuable in assessing the major opinions from both sides of the debate. Many of these articles incorporated an outside source or opinion from experts, senators, or pundits which I expect from reputable sites. I expected this, especially because many people are unaware of bots, how they function, and how they could potentially affect all online public discourse. I was interested to see the evolution of the media’s understanding of this topic so I am hopeful that their reporting will get more accurate moving forward.