Differences in perceptions of communication quality between a Twitterbot and human agent for information seeking and learning * Chad Edwards a, * , Austin J. Beattie a , Autumn Edwards a , Patric R. Spence b a School of Communication, Western Michigan University, USA b Division of Instructional Communication, Department of Communication, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, United States article info Article history: Received 29 March 2016 Received in revised form 5 July 2016 Accepted 7 July 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Twitterbots CASA Learning Twitter Cognitive elaboration Bot abstract Twitter’s design allows the implementation of automated programs that can submit tweets, interact with others, and generate content based on algorithms. Scholars and end-users alike refer to these programs to as “Twitterbots.” This two-part study explores the differences in perceptions of communication quality between a human agent and a Twitterbot in the areas of cognitive elaboration, information seeking, and learning outcomes. In accordance with the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) framework (Reeves & Nass, 1996), results suggest that participants learned the same from either a Twitterbot or a human agent. Results are discussed in light of CASA, as well as implications and directions for future studies. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction With 320 million active users (Welch & Popper, 2015), Twitter holds a position as one of the largest social networking sites in the world. Its extensive adoption and simplicity make Twitter a prominent medium for distributing a variety of information by individuals and organizations alike. Although Twitter offers a streamlined interface both for content creation and consumption, maintaining relevancy requires more than updating a feed. Tweets often require a significant amount of thought and crafting to be effective. Without the resources of time or funding to hire a human, organizations may enlist the help of automated programs. Ac- cording to Zhao (2003), automated programs “differ from other types of computer programs in that they are specially designed to communicate with humans in place of humans … [and] can be grouped into two categories: instrumental or communicative’’ (p. 448). Instrumental automated programs work in scenarios or ap- plications that require simple automated responses (e.g. Google Maps). Communicative automated programs interact with people in ways that mirror human communication. (e.g. Microsoft’s Cor- tana, Apple’s Siri). Twitter’s design allows automated bots to interface with others in a variety of ways. As a result, organizations frequently employ programs that act in the place of human agents. Some Twitterbots spread useful information, such as Adam Parrish’s @everyword, which since 2008 continues to Tweet virtually every word in the English language every 30 seconds. Some bots exist for mischievous purposes and damage Twitter’s reputation by sending out spam and promotional hyperlinks. Although useful in many contexts, most Twitterbots exist for communicative task-oriented purposes such as reminders, scheduling, content creation, or information dissemination (Edwards, Edwards, Spence, & Shelton, 2014). Automated Twitterbots allow organizations to possess a social network presence with minimal human input. This “botification” allows computer software effectively to replace the role of a human (Hwang, Pearce, & Nanis, 2012). Research exploring methodologies for differentiating human or automated accounts note that being able to distinguish the difference can be difficult. Although there were some differences, the distinction between human or auto- mated accounts in updating patterns was similar (Chu, Gianvecchio, Wang, & Jajodia, 2010). Though research has given insight into the differences between human or automated accounts, further research is necessary to understand how automated * This project is a collaboration of the Communication and Social Robotics Labs (www.combotlab.org). * Corresponding author. E-mail address: chad.edwards@wmich.edu (C. Edwards). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.07.003 0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2016) 1e6 Please cite this article in press as: Edwards, C., et al., Differences in perceptions of communication quality between a Twitterbot and human agent for information seeking and learning, Computers in Human Behavior (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.07.003