Where socionomics meets 1984

Fake tweets by 'socialbot' fool hundreds of followers

When the experiment ended last month, a before-and-after comparison of connections within the target community showed that the bots were "able to heavily shape and distort the structure of the network", according to its organiser, Tim Hwang, founder of the startup company Robot, Robot and Hwang, based in San Francisco. Some members of the community who had not previously been directly connected were now linked, for example. Hwang has not revealed the identities of the entrants, or of the members of the 500-person Twitter network that the bots infiltrated.

The success suggests that socialbots could manipulate social networks on a larger scale, for good or ill. "We could use these bots in the future to encourage social participation or support for humanitarian causes," Hwang claims. He also acknowledges that there is a flip side, if bots were also used to inhibit activism.

Corporations, the military and activists of all stripes will be interested in nudging social networks, but they are looking for targeted strikes on a sea of social mood. If social mood is negative, a corporation wants to mitigate damage to its reputation or brand. A government, on the other hand, may want to push the entire social mood. In order to know where they are, they need a map, which socionomics provides. If they then have an effective tool to influence social mood, they can take propaganda to a whole new level.