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In this article, we perform a comparative analysis of the usage and impact of bots and humans on Twitter\u2014one of the largest OSNs in the world. We collect a large-scale Twitter dataset and define various metrics based on tweet metadata. Using a human annotation task, we assign \u201cbot\u201d and \u201chuman\u201d ground-truth labels to the dataset and compare the annotations against an online bot detection tool for evaluation. We then ask a series of questions to discern important behavioural characteristics of bots and humans using metrics within and among four popularity groups. From the comparative analysis, we draw clear differences and interesting similarities between the two entities.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3298789","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,6]],"date-time":"2019-02-06T19:16:27Z","timestamp":1549480587000},"page":"1-23","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":46,"title":["A Large-scale Behavioural Analysis of Bots and Humans on Twitter"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Zafar","family":"Gilani","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Reza","family":"Farahbakhsh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institut Mines-T\u00e9l\u00e9com, T\u00e9l\u00e9com SudParis, CNRS Lab UMR5157, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gareth","family":"Tyson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Queen Mary University of London, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jon","family":"Crowcroft","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, UK"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2675133.2675208"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM\u201912)","author":"Aiello Luca Maria","year":"2012","unstructured":"Luca Maria Aiello , Martina Deplano , Rossano Schifanella , and Giancarlo Ruffo . 2012 . People are strange when you\u2019re a stranger: Impact and influence of bots on social networks . In Proceedings of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM\u201912) . Luca Maria Aiello, Martina Deplano, Rossano Schifanella, and Giancarlo Ruffo. 2012. People are strange when you\u2019re a stranger: Impact and influence of bots on social networks. In Proceedings of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM\u201912)."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1401890.1401897"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3041021.3051155"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","volume-title":"Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion. First Monday 21, 11","author":"Bessi Alessandro","year":"2016","unstructured":"Alessandro Bessi and Emilio Ferrara . 2016. Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion. First Monday 21, 11 ( 2016 ). 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Stefano Cresci, Roberto Di Pietro, Marinella Petrocchi, Angelo Spognardi, and Maurizio Tesconi. 2018. Social fingerprinting: Detection of spambot groups through DNA-inspired behavioral modeling. IEEE Trans. Depend. Sec. Comput. 15, 4 (2018), 561--576.","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Depend. Sec. Comput."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_16_1","volume-title":"Cashtag piggybacking: Uncovering spam and bot activity in stock microblogs on Twitter. CoRR abs\/1804.04406","author":"Cresci Stefano","year":"2018","unstructured":"Stefano Cresci , Fabrizio Lillo , Daniele Regoli , Serena Tardelli , and Maurizio Tesconi . 2018. Cashtag piggybacking: Uncovering spam and bot activity in stock microblogs on Twitter. CoRR abs\/1804.04406 ( 2018 ). arxiv:1804.04406 http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1804.04406 Stefano Cresci, Fabrizio Lillo, Daniele Regoli, Serena Tardelli, and Maurizio Tesconi. 2018. Cashtag piggybacking: Uncovering spam and bot activity in stock microblogs on Twitter. 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