{"602242":{"#nid":"602242","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":"How to Spot a Fake Twitter Follower and Assess the Value of a Real One","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIan Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) at Georgia Institute of Technology, was quoted in the\u003Cem\u003E KQED\u003C\/em\u003E, February 7, article, \u0026ldquo;How to Spot a Fake Twitter Follower and Assess the Value of a Real One.\u0026rdquo; The School of Literature, Media, and Communication is part of the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EExcerpt:\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cblockquote\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003ERobots are on Twitter, and people pay to have them as followers. That begs the question: What is the worth of a real, live human Twitter follower? First, the background on fake accounts. A recent New York Times investigation delved into how companies create and sell fabricated Twitter accounts, or bots. These bots are used to do things like automatically retweet posts and inflate people\u0026rsquo;s follower count. You don\u0026rsquo;t have to buy bots to get them as followers. Some are programmed to follow accounts, hoping to lure real people to follow them back. That makes the bot look more believable\u0026hellip; Ian Bogost is a professor of media studies at \u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech\u003C\/strong\u003E, and he wrote a piece for The Atlantic questioning how much we value Twitter followers in general. Bogost said we are not being critical enough about what it means to have a follower, whether that follower is \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;fake.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;People assume when they have a follower on Twitter, that it\u0026rsquo;s not just a real human being,\u0026rdquo; Bogost said. \u0026ldquo;But that it is someone who is looking at them and listening to them and responding to them, and they can sell products or services to.\u0026rdquo;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor the full article, visit the\u003Cem\u003E \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/news\/2018\/02\/07\/how-to-spot-a-fake-twitter-follower-and-assess-the-value-of-a-real-one\/\u0022\u003EKQED\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E website.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"34554","created_gmt":"2018-02-12 16:53:40","changed_gmt":"2018-02-12 16:53:40","author":"ralu3","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"Henry Owen","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/news\/2018\/02\/07\/how-to-spot-a-fake-twitter-follower-and-assess-the-value-of-a-real-one\/","dateline":{"date":"2018-02-07T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2018-02-07T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"599763":{"id":"599763","type":"image","title":"Ian Bogost","body":null,"created":"1513011274","gmt_created":"2017-12-11 16:54:34","changed":"1539182171","gmt_changed":"2018-10-10 14:36:11","alt":"Portrait photo of School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor Ian Bogost","file":{"fid":"228650","name":"NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2519019,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg?itok=cy9ipBQS"}}},"media_ids":["599763"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1283","name":"School of Literature, Media, and Communication"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"314","name":"twitter"},{"id":"117241","name":"Account"},{"id":"177085","name":"follow"},{"id":"177086","name":"respond"},{"id":"167247","name":"service"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}