(DDoS) attacks to those deployed for mass identity theft. There are a similar
range of varieties of political bots. Listener bots can monitor social media
sites and databases for key information but also track and communicate
what they ﬁnd (Woolley 2016). Spambots, conversely, are built to generate
noise (Cresci et al. 2017). Wikiedits bots can be created to monitor
politicians’ edits to Wikipedia pages, but they are also often programmed
to tweet about alleged changes to Twitter in efforts to name and shame –
potentially stymying governmental use of Wikipedia (Ford, Dubois, and
Puschmann 2016). Sleeper bots are social media accounts that sit on a site
like Twitter all but unused for years, in order to generate a more realistic
online presence, and are then activated during key political events (Howard,
Kollanyi, and Woolley 2016). Troll bots, built to harass, have been used to
demobilize activists trying to organize and communicate on Twitter but can
Social_Media_and_Democracy