A Twitter Bot is a Twitter account that generates and/or retweets tweets without a human being controlling those actions. While some Twitter Bots act as spam (which can be very, very annoying), there are some fun, some political, and other interesting bots that exist on this social media platform.
In my Digital Humanities class, we discussed Twitter Bots, and how people create them to help conduct political protests. Bots such as NRA Tally are deemed by some to be conductors of political protests. The NRA Tally bot takes shots at the NRA by mixing one of their proud messages to the general public with a news headline regarding a shooting within the United States. By doing this, the bot is creating tweets that make the NRA seem desensitized and indifferent to the gun violence in America. And if you are a "crazy, liberal nut job" like me, this just may be one of the coolest things to ever exist.
However, is it possible for something nonhuman to create something as meaningful as a political protest? The idea of meaning is a controversial topic when related to computer-generated texts, such as NRA Tally. The coding used to direct the bot was created by humans, with the intention of bashing the NRA in such a way. The readers can also create meaning out of the bot's tweets. Due to the careful coding of the human code creators along with the interpretive nature of the tweets, I would argue that the NRA Tally is indeed a meaningful bot that can create meaningful tweets and aid in conducting a political protest.
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