Social Bots - The potential opinion makers. TAB-Fokus

Generally, social bots are used to distort the content of discussions and to influence the significance of topics or the popularity of people and products.
They have the potential to change the political debate culture on the Internet by massively spreading (fake) news and to undermine faith in democracy by »poisoning « a society’s climate.
So far, the still recent phenomenon of social bots has been detected particularly on the platform Twitter.
There is only little evidence so far with regard to their actual impact on shaping a (political) opinion.
The technical possibilities to uncover the impacts of social bots lag behind their rapid development.