The bots’ activity is already frequently documented in the literature, and the war between Russia and Ukraine accentuated this scholarly interest for users’ sensemaking. Applying folk theories framework on 56 semi-structured interviews with users who tweet about “Russian bots,” I examine how bots might be understood as structural-computational entities, with complex roles in shaping digitally mediated realities. Findings reveal several theories associated with Russian bots. First, participants believe that these bots actively endorse users’ political enemies, which are mainly politicians from the participants’ countries. Second, such bots are considered to increase animosities between users, as participants actively unfollow their peers on Twitter and unfriend them in real life, based on their opinions regarding the war in Ukraine. Third, bots boost users’ digital activity, given the fact that participants consider them responsible for artificially increasing the popularity of certain accounts or, on the contrary, for systematic and aggressive attacks against others.

中文翻译：

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社交与技术之间的“俄罗斯机器人”：审视 Twitter 用户的普通民间理论


机器人的活动已经频繁地记录在文献中，俄罗斯和乌克兰之间的战争加剧了这种对用户意义建构的学术兴趣。我将民间理论框架应用于对发布有关“俄罗斯机器人”推文的用户进行的 56 次半结构化访谈，研究了如何将机器人理解为结构计算实体，在塑造数字介导的现实方面发挥着复杂的作用。调查结果揭示了与俄罗斯机器人相关的几种理论。首先，参与者认为这些机器人积极支持用户的政敌，这些政敌主要是参与者所在国家的政客。其次，此类机器人被认为会增加用户之间的敌意，因为参与者会根据他们对乌克兰战争的看法，在 Twitter 上主动取消关注他们的同伴，并在现实生活中取消他们的好友关系。第三，机器人促进了用户的数字活动，因为参与者认为它们对人为提高某些帐户的受欢迎程度负有责任，或者相反，对其他帐户进行系统性和侵略性攻击。