{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,29]],"date-time":"2026-04-29T11:24:12Z","timestamp":1777461852060,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,3,4]],"date-time":"2022-03-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1646352000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Informatics"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Bots (social robots) are computer programs that replicate human behavior in online social networks. They are either fully automated or semi-automated, and their use makes online activism vulnerable to manipulation. This study examines the existence of social robots in the #FeesMustFall movement by conducting a scientific investigation into whether social bots were present in the form of Twitter bots and cyborgs. A total of 576,823 tweets posted between 15 October 2015 and 10 April 2017 were cleaned, with 490,449 tweets analyzed for 90,783 unique persons. Three separate approaches were used to screen out suspicious bot and cyborg activity, supplemented by the DeBot team\u2019s methodology. User 1 and User 2, two of the 90,783 individuals, were recognized as bots or cyborgs in the study and contributed 22,413 (4.57 percent) of the 490,449 tweets. This confirms the existence of bots throughout the campaign, which aided in the #FeesMustFall\u2019s amplification on Twitter, complicating sentiment analysis and invariably making it the most popular and lengthiest hashtag campaign in Africa, particularly at the time of data collection.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/informatics9010021","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,3,6]],"date-time":"2022-03-06T20:38:16Z","timestamp":1646599096000},"page":"21","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Identification of Bots and Cyborgs in the #FeesMustFall Campaign"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"9","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2128-0390","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yaseen","family":"Khan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"KZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Surendra","family":"Thakur","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"KZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Obiseye","family":"Obiyemi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"KZN e-Skills CoLab, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South Africa"},{"name":"Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Osun State University, Osogbo 4494, Nigeria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9227-7389","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emmanuel","family":"Adetiba","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Covenant University, Ota 1023, Nigeria"},{"name":"Covenant Applied Informatics and Communication Africa Center of Excellence, Covenant University, Ota 1023, Nigeria"},{"name":"HRA, Institute for Systems Science, Durban University of Technology, Durban 4001, South Africa"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,3,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"(2022, February 09). 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