# 2020Elections: Bot attacks on female candidates – What it is and how to face it.

In addition to the analog cultural barriers that female candidates must overcome during elections, due to structural sexism rooted in political institutions, the adverse face of the internet also reaffirms prejudices through artificial intelligence. This post aims to explain technical and social issues that set the stage for a disproportionate attack on women aspiring to elective positions through the dissemination of misinformation and hate speech by bots.

 Gender inequality in the electoral context: Reflections on the internet

Luciana di Meco, a researcher at The Wilson Center, assessed the twitter conversations of 6 primary candidates for the 2020 U.S. election. The study showed that women candidates received more attacks from right-wing accounts and fake news, and also received less coverage from traditional media compared to their male colleagues. Di Meco also pointed out that the comments and narratives directed at female candidates were more negative and focused on the character and identity of the pre-candidates than on their eligibility or political proposals, according to the summary table below:

Laura Restrepo: https://bit.ly/2ItycAL

The researcher’s conclusions demonstrate that the internet has the potential to spread socially widespread prejudices for decades and that it makes it difficult for women to participate in politics. In Brazil, the success rate of women running for elections is 6% compared to 18% of men. Contrary to the perception that may be the majority, several surveys ¹’² show that the success rate between women and men who apply is quite similar.

Within the political theory of voting, as pointed out by Albuquerque, several variables form the political will of the voter, such as party identification; ideological orientations; cultural relevance; ethnic origin; education level; etc. When a male candidate and a female candidate are presented to the voter, and all variables are omitted except for gender, empirical research carried out by Fulton proves that there is no preference among candidates. However, when the quality of politicians is presented to the voter, female candidates are 3% disadvantaged compared to men. In other words, the perception that women who aspire to politics need to be better and demonstrate greater quality than male candidates is a real perception

Bot sexism

At first, the title above may seem inconsistent, as it attributes a human characteristic – sexism- to something non-human – bot. Even though the bots look a lot like real users (so much so that 53% of the survey respondents at the Pew Research Center said they didn’t know how to differentiate a bot from a human), bot is basically algorithms. Bot is short for “robot” and it refers to “a type specific computer program that performs tasks autonomously, based on algorithms ”, according to research by the Internet Lab. Bots have different levels of complexity and are extremely important for the functioning of the internet, since about 40% of all traffic of the network is operated by bots³. Another type of bot -chatbots- are those that interact with users, either to help them with purchases or to answer questions about a product. Bots that communicate with the user are usually trained in “natural language processing” so that the user experience is as pleasant as possible. However, this technological advantage is also used in a harmful way.

In the electoral context, researchers at the USC Information Sciences Institute assessed the behavior of bots in the 2016 and 2018 elections. In the case of the behavior of bots on twitter, in 2016 the focus was mainly on retweeting tweets and producing various messages on the same subject. This behavior results in the pollution of public debate, as the algorithms of the great social media tend to value subjects that are being widely commented by the community. However, since they are non-human accounts that provide this favor, human users – and voters – can be deceived into believing that a certain candidate is highly popular when the real scenario is the other way around.

The distortion of political movement in the network especially harms female candidates, as studies indicate, that can result in voters stop voting for women, even though they are their initial preference, as they believe that their community will not overcome gender bias and will be able to choose a candidate. Therefore, they strategically vote for the male candidate who would be their second choice. So when public debate is polluted and bots simulate collective preference for a male candidate, even voters who prefer women tend to give up on their original candidates.

As for the analysis of the 2018 elections, the data collected by the researchers show that the bots decreased the retweets and volume of posts, due to the learning they absorbed in the last election. The bots took a more mimetic approach of “increasing dialogue and engaging through the use of research, a strategy typical of renowned news agencies and researchers, possibly aiming at legitimacy to these accounts”.

Although the main disseminating agents of fake news are human user accounts, as shown by the MIT study; bots have great influence on the spread of misinformation. As demonstrated by an Indiana University study, bots play a critical role in the viral spread of fake news. In other words, even if human accounts elaborate an untrue narrative, it is the computational capacity characteristic of bots that allows disinformation to be replicated hundreds and thousands of times. Considering the conclusion of IFE’S researchers that

“False or obscene information about women spreads faster and more intensely than misinformation about men”,

 it is clear that the role of bots in the propagation of untrue information about female candidates has even greater potential for silencing speeches and confusing public opinion. This relationship between the dissemination of fake news by bots and sexism was widely perceived in the 2016 US elections. Researchers at George Mason University point out that for every 20 online posts with fake content, 17 favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, and often these untrue posts were originated and propagated by bots.

It may seem that the gender difference of Clinton and Trump was just one among many other contrasting characteristics. However, considering the 2018 report that pointed out that journalists and women politicians are harassed every 30 seconds on Twitter, mostly for aesthetic and objective comments, although gender is only one of the characteristics of, it is a sufficiently striking factor to unbalance the electoral election.

How to face bot attacks and strengthen female candidates?

In this section you will be presented with a list of very practical actions so that you can be an internet user that collaborates to strengthen the country’s democratic quality.

1. Get informed with quality content: Several Brazilian initiatives seek to disseminate and assist the participation of women in politics. Do you want to know about candidate proposals, statistics and support material? Access Mulheres negras decidem; Mapa das minas; Meu voto será feminista.
2. Promote female candidates. Throughout the text, various technological tools have been presented that are used to undermine women’s candidature. For the effect of these harmful content to be suppressed, it is necessary for the internet to be fed by positive content and to give visibility to the political proposals of candidates.
3. Evaluate the source and information you received. Did you read a message that seems untrue or that the source is doubtful? Check if the information is true through these fact-checking sites: g1.globo.com/fato-ou-fake; projocomprova.com.br; apublica.org and see if the account that released the information is a bot or not: https://botometer.iuni.iu.edu/#!/
4. Report it. Brazilian law protects men and women from discrimination and harassment, whether on the street or on the internet. If you access a post that is offensive or untrue, there are 2 main forms of reporting: the platform’s own mechanisms and the website https://new.safernet.org.br/delounce 
5. Vote for women. The exercise of political freedom is a fundamental right of every citizen won after many struggles. When choosing your vote for the 2020 elections, choose the candidate who best expresses and defends your interests, regardless of gender, ethnicity, social class or other identity factors.

If you were interested in the impact that bots can have in the Brazilian elections, click here to read Odélio Porto’s text.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.
Illustration by Freepik