Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality

Many users of the Internet are aware of bots: automated programs that work behind the scenes to come up with search suggestions, check the weather, filter emails, or clean up Wikipedia entries. More recently, a new software robot has been making its presence felt in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter – the socialbot. However, unlike other bots, socialbots are built to appear human. While a weatherbot will tell you if it's sunny and a spambot will incessantly peddle Viagra, socialbots will ask you questions, have conversations, like your posts, retweet you, and become your friend. All the while, if they're well-programmed, you won't know that you're tweeting and friending with a robot.

Who benefits from the use of software robots? Who loses? Does a bot deserve rights? Who pulls the strings of these bots? Who has the right to know what about them? What does it mean to be intelligent? What does it mean to be a friend? Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality is one of the first academic collections to critically consider the socialbot and tackle these pressing questions.

Robert W. Gehl is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, and the author of Reverse Engineering Social Media (2014, Temple University Press). His research draws on science and technology studies, software studies, and critical/cultural studies and focuses on the intersections between technology, subjectivity, and practice.

Maria Bakardjieva is professor of communication at the University of Calgary, Canada, and the author of Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life (2005, Sage). Her research has examined Internet use practices across different social and cultural context with a focus on users’ active appropriation of new media and on the phenomenology of digital communication.