Bot comments Report May 2024
The dataset of toxic bot comments detected in May 2024, spanning from May 1 to May 31, contained over 1,250 English messages (n=1,248). The average toxicity score of the bot content was relatively low at 0.20. However, a significant spike in toxic activity was observed on May 7, 2024, which could be linked to the detainment of two Ukrainian colonels recruited by Russia to assassinate President Zelensky (see the full list of events here).
Despite the low overall toxicity score, several messages contained harmful language, featuring toxic keywords such as idiot, Israhell, demoncrats, leftist scum, Jewish, morons, bitch, zio, Karens, and stooge.
Politics was involved in 15% of the toxic content, often combined with Ridicule, Contempt, and/or Religion.
About 5% of the messages contained Threats, while 1% included Disinformation.
The most frequent combination of categories was Politics + Religion (see category explanations here).
The word cloud below displays the 50 most frequently used keywords in May 2024’s toxic bot comments. The size of the words reflects their relative frequency, with terms like genocide, terror, Israel, and Palestinian appearing most often.
These words form the top 50 most used keywords by bot comments in May 2024
The table below highlights the various toxic categories detected in May 2024’s dataset, along with their respective frequencies (represented by black dots and explained further below). No single category was significantly more prominent than the others. However, the categories Ridicule and Jews had the highest average toxicity score of 0.30 (on a scale from 0 to 1, where 1 represents the highest level of toxicity).
The bar chart below reveals that the most prominent categories with the highest toxicity scores in May 2024’s dataset of toxic bot comments were Politics and Ridicule, followed by Threat and Profanity. However, the majority of the toxic bot content fell under the Politics category, indicating a primary focus on influencing political discussions.
Number of toxic messages by category
The keyword network below visualizes the main focus of toxic bot comments in May 2024. Different colors represent clusters of frequently co-occurring words, highlighting key narratives. A significant focus is on the conflict between Israel and Gaza, with terms like Israel, genocide, terrorist, land, die, and Palestinian commonly appearing together. This cluster underscores how bot comments centered on themes of violence, territorial disputes, and political tension in the region.
