Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media - Paperback

by Samuel C. Woolley (Editor), Philip N. Howard (Editor)

Social media platforms do not just circulate political ideas, but support computational propaganda and manipulative disinformation campaigns. Although some of these disinformation campaigns are carried out directly by individuals, most are waged by software, commonly known as bots, programmed to perform simple, repetitive, robotic tasks. Including case studies from nine countries and covering propaganda efforts over a wide array of social media platforms, this book argues that bots, fake accounts, and social media algorithms amount to a new political communications mechanism that it terms "computational propaganda."

Author Biography

Samuel C. Woolley is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin.

Philip N. Howard is Director and Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute at University of Oxford.

They are the co-founders of the Computational Propaganda Project. This research endeavour is focused on the study of the manipulation of public opinion via online spaces. The project is based at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.