Common Core Advocates’ New Boogeyman: Twitterbots
Bill Gates had to find an explanation as to why Common Core has become increasingly unpopular. He funded a study that found the source of Common Core advocates’ woes.
Twitterbots.
Yes you read that right – Twitterbots are to blame.
The Consortium for Policy Research in Education decided it would look at how social media impacted Common Core so it launched the #CommonCore Project. Apparently that was more important than actually, I don’t know, studying how Common Core has shaped public policy.
Has social media impacted the education debate? Absolutely.
Are Tweetbots to blame? Well that’s the new narrative now.
The Huffington Post published this “An Army of Sophisticated Bots is Influencing the Debate Around Education.”
For several years, university researchers have been watching how the debate surrounding Common Core has played out on Twitter. Between 2013 and 2016, they analyzed about 1 million tweets to understand how the social network was changing political discourse in America ― not only as it related to Common Core, but in a much larger sense.
Their discovery wasn’t pretty. Three years before “fake news” became a mainstream issue, fabrications and misinformation had already intensified the degree ofCommon Core Advocates' New Boogeyman: Twitterbots | Truth in American Education: