| During the COVID-19 pandemic,social media is both an essential platform for the dissemination of public health-related information and an important channel for people to communicate.As an emerging communication subject,social bots have also participated in spreading epidemic-related information on social platforms.Although social bots’ automated information distribution capability promotes the rapid and efficient dissemination of epidemic prevention information,it also has the shortcomings of being easily exploited in major issues.The inherent bias of some Western media and opinion leaders in discussing China-related topics has an impact on China’s international image and contribution to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.As a "super communicator" on social media platforms,the influence of social bots on China-related issues cannot be ignored.In the face of global changes in the post-pandemic era,it is urgent to understand the current situation of public opinion ecology,clarify the mechanism and influence of public opinion manipulation on social platforms,and further explore ways to cope with it.This study analyzes the discussion contents and accounts about the COVID-19 pandemic on the Twitter platform from the research perspective of human-machine communication with the help of Botometer,LDA topic model,word vectorization and semantic similarity calculation,and social network analysis.It is found that in the process of opinion generation on social platforms,the subjects of public opinion are no longer just human users but are composed of social bots and human.They form a human-machine relationship in which competition and cooperation coexist,promoting the game of public opinion on social platforms.Due to the emergence of the "digital augmentation" power of social bots,the generation mechanism of public opinion manipulation presents the characteristics of hybrid manipulation: the combination of discourse strategy of issue manipulation and diffusion strategy of technological manipulation.Some maliciously manipulated social bots rely on strategies such as "identity disguise","issue association," and "rapid diffusion" to spread conspiracy theories,rumors,false information,and misinformation in the "human-machine" communication network,causing "Information Disorder" in social platforms.In the complex and diversified COVID-19 pandemic international public opinion environment,we have to actively respond to the hybrid public opinion manipulation that is covert,manipulative and subversive,and take the initiative to build a new order of information ethics. |
