Interactions - March/April 2012

RON WAKKARY ERIK STOLTERMAN

Supercharging the Social

This issue’s cover story brings to
the fore an issue that lurks behind
the phenomenon of social media.
But what socialbots do is far from
passive lurking; in fact, it may be
better described as supercharg-
ing the interactions of people to
people, and people to systems,
in social media. Tim Hwang, Ian
Pearce, and Max Nanis have col-
lected four pieces by a diverse
group of authors that explore
the double-edged innovations of
socialbots and how they impact
social media. The lessons are
clear, namely that digitization
drives botification, meaning that
the use of technology within our
human activities fosters the cre-
ation of software to act in place of
humans. Moreover, the sophistica-
tion of socialbots and the degree
to which they are embedded in
social media can significantly shape
human systems. The article gives
space to software engineers,
researchers, marketing special-
ists, and users of social media to
explore and analyze the grow-
ing phenomenon of socialbots in
social media.