Teaching Comparative Government

Some people in Mexico are serious about exposing online political manipulation. Mexico election: Concerns about election bots, trolls and fakes Political parties in Mexico are using bots and fake accounts in an attempt to influence voter behaviour and in some cases spread false stories ahead of the country's presidential elections on 1 July, according to researchers, journalists and activists… Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher with Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project, has been tracking automated accounts, or bots, which attempt to manipulate public opinion by boosting the popularity of social media posts. But there are other tricks deployed in aid of politicians. "Troll farms"… are run by actual humans, each of which might control dozens or hundreds of accounts. And often accounts are semi-automated, pumping out messages with a mix of computer power and human know-how… In a paper published in 2017, Bradshaw along with researcher Philip Howard, conclud...

It seems as if protesters find new methods of expression as often as the Iranian government shuts down avenues of protest. Iranians launch banknote protest to get round censorship "Banknotes are our un-censorable messengers," one user wrote, referring to a rumoured plan to permanently block the popular messaging app Telegram, which is by far the most popular digital communication tool in Iran. Slogans included "I am an overthrower". Some of the sayings were originally chanted during mass anti-establishment protests at the turn of the year. In late December, demonstrators took to the streets then to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic situation in the country. Telegram was believed to have been the main platform people used to obtain and share information about the protests, which took place across Iran from late December 2017 to January 2018. Nearly 8,000 tweets have been posted since 28 April under the hashtag #Onehundredthousand_talking_ba...