Top academics have issued warnings against the use of bots and algorithms in the proliferation of political propaganda saying this was a threat to democracy. The academics drawn from the Internet Institute at Oxford University analyzed millions of online postings that appeared in nine countries on 7 social media platforms including Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). The countries which were studied included Germany, Russia and the United States.

“Computational propaganda is now one of the most powerful tools against democracy. Social media firms may not be creating this nasty content, but they are the platform for it,” wrote the lead authors of the report, Phil Howard and Samuel Woolley.

Computational propaganda

The report further indicated that how computational propaganda was used was dependent on the governance system. In authoritarian states social media platforms were used as a way to impose social control whereas in democracies, the social media platforms were used by the various competing players to influence and shape public opinion.

While regimes make use of political bots which have been developed to act and look like real people to silence political opponents and so-called enemies of the state and push the official message of the state, political campaigns in conjunction with their supporters, on the other hand, deploy computational propaganda and political bots in the course of elections in a bid to defame critics or sway the vote. Such political campaigns also use these tools to troll opponents and run disinformation campaigns that are coordinated.

Democracy in danger

According to the study conducted by the Oxford University academics, the techniques are working and measurable influence was observed during the 2016 presidential election in the United States. The researchers also pointed out that many social media platform accounts are in full control of disinformation campaigns and governments.

In Russia, for instance, 45% of the activity on Twitter was managed by accounts that were highly automated. According to the researchers, Ukraine stood out as the country that exhibited the highest level of computational propaganda on Twitter, Facebook and VKontakte.

On Tuesday shares of Twitter Inc fell by 0.88% to close the day at $16.91.