Socialbots and Their Friends

"Socialbots and Their Friends is an exciting and timely book that accompanies the reader through the fascinating paths of a particular innovation: the socialbot. This collection represents a major scholarly work and offers a rich compendium of insights into why todays societies are affected by various processes of the automation of sociability." Leopoldina Fortunati, University of Udine, Italy

Robert W. Gehl is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah, and the author of Reverse Engineering Social Media (2014, Temple University Press). His research draws on science and technology studies, software studies, and critical/cultural studies and focuses on the intersections between technology, subjectivity, and practice. Maria Bakardjieva is professor of communication at the University of Calgary, Canada, and the author of Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life (2005, Sage). Her research has examined Internet use practices across different social and cultural context with a focus on users active appropriation of new media and on the phenomenology of digital communication.

1. Socialbots and Their Friends 2. The Blurring Test 3. The socialization of early Internet bots: IRC and the ecology of human-robot interactions online 4. Making AI Safe for Humans: A Conversation With Siri 5. Embodied Conversational Agents as Social Actors? Sociological Considerations on the Change of Human-Machine Relations in Online Environments 6. Contested play: The culture and politics of reddit bots 7. Semi-autonomous fan fiction: Japanese character bots and nonhuman affect 8. Speculations on the Sociality of Socialbots 9. Authenticity by Design: Reflections on researching, designing and teaching Socialbots 10. Do Socialbots Dream of Popping the Filter Bubble? The role of socialbots in promoting participatory democracy in social media 11. Rationalizing Sociality: An Unfinished Script for Socialbots 12. The Other Question: Socialbots and the Question of Ethics