We invite you to our PDW 'Bot Theory, Methods, and Ethic' on Saturday, Aug 5, 2023, from 4:00PM - 5:30PM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4) at the 2023 AOM Conference in Boston!
Bots, automated accounts in online social networks, have a significant presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. They post messages rapidly and on a large scale and potentially impact communication processes and information diffusion on these platforms. Scholars have associated bots with political propaganda (Caldarelli et al. 2020) and the spread of false news (Shao et al. 2018), suggesting that their deployment imposes major threats to organizations and society (Ferrara et al. 2016). In addition, bots can threaten the validity of online social network research, especially if scholars fail to control for and eliminate confounding effects caused by the presence and activity of these bots (Salge and Karahanna 2018).
After a successful PDW on "Researching Bots in Online Social Networks" at the Annual Meeting of AOM 2022 in Seattle, we look forward to continuing the conversation at AOM 2023 in Boston with a new PDW on "Bot Theory, Methods, and Ethics." In this year's PDW, we seek to (1) facilitate theory development on bots; (2) discuss how bots can be used as tools for conducting research across fields; and (3) present three provocations on the need to anthropomorphize bots and how it might constrain our design abilities and understanding of intelligence and autonomy. We also look forward to maintaining an interdisciplinary community of scholars researching bots, which we started last year in Seattle.
The PDW consists of two parts. First, four leading experts will share their thoughts and experiences on the three objectives outlined above. The second part will feature a panel debate, during which presenters and panelists will deliberate an ethical dilemma involving bots. A discussion with the participants will follow the debate.
SESSION DETAILS
PRESENTERS:
- Hani Safadi (University of Georgia)
- Jason Thatcher (Temple University)
- Aaron Schecter (University of Georgia)
- Lior Zalmanson (Tel Aviv University)
PANELISTS:
- Hani Safadi (University of Georgia)
- Jason Thatcher (Temple University)
- Aaron Schecter (University of Georgia)
- Lior Zalmanson (Tel Aviv University)
- Carolina Salge (University of Georgia)
- Anna Priante (Rotterdam School of Management) - moderator
WHEN: Saturday, Aug 5, 2023, from 4:00PM - 5:30PM ET (GMT-4/UTC-4)
WHERE: Boston Marriott Copley Place in Salon D
ORGANIZERS:
- Carolina Salge (University of Georgia)
- Anna Priante (Rotterdam School of Management)
- Aaron Schecter (University of Georgia)
This PDW DOES NOT require special registration and is open to all Academy members.
For additional details, please contact Carolina Salge (calsalge@uga.edu) or Anna Priante (priante@rsm.nl).