How do you get your heard against an army of bots?
DemCast amplifies progressive messages through a network of grassroots volunteers. It's real. Authentic messages shared by real human beings - not an army of Russian bots.
DemCast cultivates and amplifies the impact of grassroots digital media. It bolsters a civil, fact-based and grassroots-led conversation that is free of profit motive. Social platforms are harnessed to maximize the connectivity and impact of the progressive grassroots activists.
What is a social media algorithm?
The Facebook News Feed algorithm is an artificial intelligence software that determines which posts to display on the user’s news feed and in what order they show up. The algorithm assesses every Facebook post, scores them, then arranges the content pieces in a non-chronological order according to the user’s interests. This happens each time users refresh their Facebook news feed. - Iconosquare
How do algorithms decide which posts to share?
Social media platforms are designed to maximize revenue. That means keeping viewers engaged on their platform for as long as possible so they can be served more ads. Algorithms decide which messages you will see and take several factors into account including:
How much engagement has a post had already? Bad actors manipulate this algorithm criteria by creating bots that 'like and share' specific messages.
How current (timely) are the posts? More recent posts are likely to get exposure.
What is the acceleration of a message being shared? Posts that are shared quickly are more likely to go viral. Algorithms
How connected (popular) is the person or bot making the post? How many connections do they have? Bots cheat by intentionally by other fake bots in their team like them.
Is the post original or just a mass copy of another post? Bots fake this by programmatically modifying a post before reposting it.
Learn more about social media algorithms: Sprout Social
DemCast
DemCast
DemCast is an advocacy-based 501(c)4 nonprofit that does not accept ads. It amplifies messages across email, social media and podcasts. isn't not get paid for clicks and sustained by donations from grassroots supporters. DemCast focus areas include:
- Elections at the local, state & national level
Get out the vote initiatives
Voting rights and election security
Activism itself – resources & strategies for connecting better as a community
Core policy areas like reproductive rights, climate change, gun control, immigration & health care reform – especially how they pertain to local areas and states, with a focus on calls to action.
How DemCast amplifies progressive messages
DemCast curates messages from partners and shares them with a network of volunteers across the country. DemCast volunteers share the messages across social media, email and other means. This genuine sharing of messages promptly by volunteers helps amplify important messages.
DemCast features reporting, analysis, OpEds and podcasts, videos and graphics produced by grassroots activists. DemCast boosts the movement on the left, and highlight the destructive and harmful policies pushed by the right. As such, we do not intend to publish content that may be destructive for an eventual nominee who would be facing GOP opposition.
How to spot a bot
Bots generate tremendous amounts of content. They constantly work to support a certain cause, or to attack something that it does not believe in. While a human might be hard-pressed to send out 10 tweets a day, a bot can send out 50, 100 or even 1,000 tweets per day. If you spot a social media account that is extremely hyperactive in how much content it generates, you’ve probably found a bot.
Bots have strange personal profiles. Their social media profile photos are often left blank and Twitter handles are sometimes just a nonsensical string of letters and numbers. Personal profiles are usually left blank as well. Bots set up fairly recently are also likely to be bots.
Bots tend to hang out together. Bots are designed to have a swarm of voices all talking about the same thing, all at the same time. Thus, bots link to bots. Bots re-tweet other bots. And bots follow other bots. So if you check out the followers of a bot social media account, you’ll often spot lots of suspicious-looking accounts. It’s literally an echo chamber, with bots echoing other bots. - SocialmediaHQ
Digital Politics Podcast
DigitalPoliticsPodcast is a non-partisan podcast and the newsletter are projects of the E-Voter Institute, co-founded by Karen Jagoda in 1998 about the use of digital and traditional tools for political and advocacy campaigns. The audience includes digital and traditional political and advocacy strategists, solution providers to political and advocacy campaigns, pollsters, association leaders, activists, fundraisers, media planners, media buyers, media providers, elected officials, staffers, candidates, digital entrepreneurs, journalists, academics and investors.
DemLabs is collaborating with E-Voter Institute to highlight grassroots campaign innovations. Find out more about how to be featured in a future podcast here.
TakeAway: Get your message heard. Support DemCast.
Deepak
DemLabs
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