Study: Twitter Bots Avoid Communication, mainly Hurl Insults and Defamatory Remarks

Zoran Gavrilovic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIJA CENTAR BEOGRAD/MO)

Zoran Gavrilovic, the executive director of the Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI), on July 25 said that the task of, he said, Twitter accounts supporting [Serbian President Aleksandar] Vucic was to transfer the toxic narrative from TV stations and newspapers to social networks. 

In a statement to BETA, Gavrilovic said that from July 16 to 21, BIRODI had conducted a survey of “pro-Vucic” Twitter accounts, using an unverified account @GavrilovicZoran of the executive director. The motive behind the study was recent detection of 14,000 so-called bot accounts of supporters of the Serbian Progressive Party and President Vucic.

"The survey aimed to establish the size and response time of “pro-Vucic” Twitter accounts, as well as to examine the content created by 'pro-Vucic' Twitter accounts. This was to see whether they served for dialogue, communication and promotion of Aleksandar Vucic, or for discrediting and labelling the Twitter users whose posts contain remarks on or mentions of accounts @avucic and @predsednikrs,” Gavrilovic explained. 

Gavrilovic said that an analysis of the content of the pro-Vucic tweets showed that the topics and narrative as well as “the arguments” were no different from Vucic’s remarks about his opponents. "This can be qualified as the transition of the toxic narrative, also pinpointed by UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression Irene Khan, from TV stations and the press to social networks, in this case Twitter,” Gavrilovic specified.

He added that the pilot study findings indicated that Serbia needed a legal solution to tackle this type of “communication” and thereby enable public dialogue participants to exercise the right to freedom of thought and expression, stipulated under Article 46 of the Serbian Constitution.