计算式宣传——全球社交媒体研究的新议题

Computational Propaganda:A New Issue in Global Social Media Research

社交媒体是当今全球传播信息的关键渠道,曾被认为有助于加强民主,但近年来受到各种形式的政治操纵,成为威胁民主的工具。国外学者把使用社交机器人、人工账户来有目的地通过社交媒体网络管理和发布虚假信息的现象称为"计算式宣传"。宣传者利用社交媒体平台的商业模式,操纵趋势算法、推荐算法来制造支持或反对宣传目标的虚假共识;编造并大肆传播"觅母"来煽动极端情绪以制造混乱和政治动荡。计算式宣传以高速、针对性强的数字形式来部署,其传播速度和造成的混乱程度是空前的。计算式宣传已成为全球关注的一个重要议题,围绕其形式、特点,对公共生活和政治制度的影响,以及如何防止危害等问题构成了崭新的跨学科研究领域。

Social media is a key channel for spreading information around the world today. Social media was once thought to help strengthen democracy, but it has been subject to various forms of political manipulation and has become a threat to democracy in recent years. The scholars abroad defined the phenomenon of using social bots and human curation to purposefully manage and distribute disinformation over social media networks as Computational Propaganda. Propagandists utilize the business model of social media platforms to manipulate trending algorithms and recommendation algorithms to create false consensus for or against propaganda objectives, they fabricate and distribute Meme to incite extreme emotions to cause chaos and political unrest. Computational propaganda is deployed in their new, high-velocity, well-targeted digital form, it’s propagation velocity and the level of confusion it creates is unprecedented. Computational propaganda has become an important issue of global concern, around its form, its characteristics, its impact on public life and political system, how to prevent its harm and other issues constitute a new interdisciplinary research field.