Bots, Algorithms, and Political Narratives | Stats + Stories Episode 396

There's a lot of concern about how bots and algorithms shape our experiences, both online and off. Increasingly, those concerns are focused on our politics. Can bots fuel political polarization? Can algorithms shape political narratives? A recent study seeks to understand the agenda-building capabilities of social bots in a political context, and that is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with Phillip Arceneaux and Josh Anderson.
Phillip Arceneaux is an assistant professor of strategic communication in Miami University’s Department of Media, Journalism & Film, where he specializes in political communication, public diplomacy, and public relations. Arceneaux also leads the Diplomacy Lab at Miami University and has consulted on public relations and marketing for organizations such as the Department of State, Naval Academy, and Central Intelligence Agency.
Josh Anderson is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona, where his work focuses on studying science communication from an ecological perspective. Anderson’s research is situated within agenda-building and social identity scholarship. He’s a mixed-methods researcher who uses survey and experimental methods, interview-based qualitative methods, and computational methods to answer his research questions.
Phil and Josh are two of the authors on a paper out with the Journal of Public Relations Research that focuses on the role social bots played in shaping campaign communication during the 2022 Ohio midterms.