So some Investigative Journalism in the Digital Age students at Eugene Lang College in New York have started the Bot or Not Project. This is a simple test that allows Twitter users to see if a particular Twitter account is maintained by an actual human being or is simple a computerized spam-sender–a “bot” (click here to see the students’ methodology in creating the test).
For fun, we decided to run the Twitter accounts of some of Hawaii’s most important and powerful public officials through the Bot or Not test, just to see if the folks we were interacting with are actually the officials (or, in some cases, their staffs) they claim to be. Here are the results, which as you’ll see, are kinda surprising.
“We think it is a human but you just never know these days”:
@GilKAOGG (Democratic state Representative Gil Keith-Agaran)
@Lingle2012 (Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda Lingle)
@MazieforHawaii (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mazie Hirono)
@TulsiGabbard (Democratic U.S. Congress candidate Tulsi Gabbard)
“We think it’s probably a human (but with bot tendencies)”:
@Daniel_Inouye (Democratic U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye)
@JKalaniEnglish (Democratic state Representative J. Kalani English)
@EdCaseHawaii (Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ed Case)
@BrianSchatz (Democratic state Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz)
@RozBaker (Democratic state Representative Roz Baker)
“We think it’s probably a bot (but with human tendencies)”:
@NeilAbercrombie (Democratic Governor Neil Abercrombie)
@MufiHannemann (Democratic U.S. Congress candidate Mufi Hannemann)
@DukeAiona2010 (Former Republican Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona)
Photo: GeorgeRexTA/Wikimedia Commons
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