Act like a human, think like a bot : A study on the capabilities required to implement a social bot on a social media platform

Sammanfattning: Social media platforms have revolutionized how people interact with each other and how people gain information. However, social media platforms such as Twitter quickly became a platform for public manipulation and spreading or amplifying political or ideological misinformation. Although malicious content can be shared by individuals, today millions of coordinated automated clients disguised as individuals exist, also called social bots which have become a significant contributor of the malicious content spread on social media platforms. Therefore, this study aims to investigate in closer look what the requirements are to create a basic social bot from resources available from the internet. A proof-ofconcept prototype is implemented in the form of a social bot on Twitter. The experiences from the work indicate thatthe skills required to create a basic social botare well within reach ofa third-year Bachelor student in the field of computer science.