© Copyright 2018 Samuel Christopher Woolley
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© Copyright 2018 Samuel Christopher Woolley Manufacturing Consensus: Computational Propaganda and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Samuel Christopher Woolley A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2018 Reading Committee: Philip N. Howard, Chair Benjamin Mako Hill Gina Neff Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Communication 2 University of Washington Abstract Manufacturing Consensus: Computational Propaganda and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Samuel Christopher Woolley Chair of Supervisory Committee Dr. Philip N. Howard This dissertation is an investigation of the ways three political actor groups used and interacted with bots and computational propaganda during the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States of America: political campaigns, journalists, and digital constituents. It is informed by data from over nine months of fieldwork, from February 2016 to after November 2016, in and around the U.S. campaign including attendance at pivotal party events, participant observation of campaigns, and consistent collection and parsing of online and offline information related to bots, computational propaganda, and the race. Over 40 interviews with a variety of experts from each of the three actor groups were done for this project. Three core working theoretical concepts emerged from this research: manufacturing consensus, the bot as an information radiator, and the bot as a proxy for the creator. The first describes the usage of bots and computational propaganda in attempts to amplify content online and give political ideas and actors the illusion of popularity in an effort to create bandwagon support. The second related to how journalists use bots as prostheses for reporting—to write simple stories, collect and parse data, and continuously communicate with the public about important information. The third explores how digital constituents, or citizens engaged in digital political communication and the usage of bots and computational propaganda online, and other bot builders can be theoretically conceived as related to, but separate from, the bots they create and deploy over the Internet. I argue, via each 3 of these concepts and through the other findings of this research, that bots are one of the most important new tools for political communication in the United States. These automated software actors are also useful in understanding novel relationships between technology and society. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: The Political Bot ...................................................................................... 13 A. Introduction: The Digital Wild West ................................................................ 13 B. Bots, Computational Propaganda, and the 2016 U.S. Election ...................... 16 C. Manufacturing Consensus, Information Radiation, and the Bot Proxy ........ 17 D. Political Communication, Technology, and Society......................................... 18 E. The Politics, and Relevance, of Bots .................................................................. 21 F. Summary of Chapters ......................................................................................... 23 Methodology: ................................................................................................................... 27 Bots, Computational Propaganda and the 2016 Campaign ........................................ 27 A. Studying the Builders of Technology, and Their Tools ................................... 27 B. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 28 C. Research Questions ............................................................................................. 31 D. Studying Bot Builders, Bots, and the 2016 Campaign ..................................... 33 E. Field Methods and Technologically-Oriented Communities .......................... 36 F. Studying Bots as Drivers of Sociality ................................................................ 39 Bots and Agenda Setting in the 2016 U.S. Election: .................................................... 45 Candidates and Campaigns on Social Media ............................................................... 45 A. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 45 B. Agenda Setting, Digital Communication and the 2016 Campaign ................. 49 C. Manufacturing Consensus and Democratizing Online Propaganda ............. 52 D. Manufacturing Consensus ................................................................................. 55 5 E. Media Agenda Setting from Political Bots ........................................................ 62 F. Democratizing Propaganda over Social Media ................................................ 65 Information Radiators: .................................................................................................. 72 Journalism, Bots, and the 2016 Campaign ................................................................... 72 A. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 72 B. Overview .............................................................................................................. 76 C. Understanding Journalism Bots ........................................................................ 78 D. Bots and the 2016 U.S. Election: Bots for and against Journalism ................ 81 E. Journalism Bots: Utility, Novelty, and Complexity ......................................... 87 F. Why Journalism Bots? ....................................................................................... 93 G. Bot Usage Against Journalists ........................................................................... 96 H. Conclusion and the Future of Journalism Bots ................................................ 98 Democratizing Computational Propaganda: ............................................................. 104 Bots and Digital Constituents During the 2016 Campaign ....................................... 104 A. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 104 B. The Democratization of Computational Propaganda ................................... 109 C. Social media Infrastructure and Constituent Bot Building .......................... 122 D. Bots as Proxies for Human Builders ............................................................... 128 E. Digital Constituents and the Diffusion of Political Bot Usage ...................... 137 Conclusion: .................................................................................................................... 139 Disinformation, Anonymity, and Automation ........................................................... 139 A. A Familiar Story, at Scale ................................................................................ 139 6 B. Confusion over Coercion .................................................................................. 142 C. Methodological Constraints ............................................................................. 143 D. Reflexivity and Epistemological Considerations ............................................ 146 E. Frontiers for Political Bot Usage ..................................................................... 148 F. Studying Bots as Communication and within Communication .................... 150 G. Defining the Bot................................................................................................. 152 H. Challenges for Ethnography of Information .................................................. 153 References ...................................................................................................................... 156 7 List of Figures Figure 1: @DyanNations Bot…p. 28-29 Figure 2: Trump Tweet About Social Media Following…p.45 Figure 3: Patrick Ruffini Outlines Bot Attacks Against Ted Cruz...p. 53 Figure 4: Twitter Bot Pushes FCC Complaint Against Ted Cruz…p. 54 Figure 5: Message Spread via Twitter Room…p. 90 8 Glossary API: Application Programming Interface DDoS: Distributed Denial of Service DNC: Democratic National Committee IFTTT: If This Then That GOP: Grand Old Party GOTV: Get Out the Vote MAGA: Make America Great Again NDI: National Democratic Institute NED: National Endowment for Democracy NGO: Non-Governmental Organization PAC: Political Action Committee RNC: Republican National Committee 9 Acknowledgements For his steady support, guidance and feedback, I would like to acknowledge my chair Dr. Philip Howard. I would also like to offer earnest thanks to Benjamin Mako Hill, Gina Neff, Ryan Calo, and the Computational Propaganda Research Project team at the University of Oxford for their generous help. I am grateful to the faculty at the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Research collaborations and friendships with fellow scholars Douglas Guilbeault, Nick Monaco, Samantha Shorey, and Tim Hwang were integral to my development as a researcher of bots and computational propaganda. I am also thankful for fellowships at Google’s think-tank Jigsaw, Central European University’s Center for Media, Data and Society, the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington and the Institute for the