AI Lund lunch seminar: Fabricated engagement in an agentic AI era: politics and gender in Sweden pre-election

Topic: Fabricated engagement in an agentic AI era: politics and gender in Sweden pre-election

When: 17 June 12.00 to 13.00

Where: Online - link by registration

Speakers: 

• Mia Liinason, Professor at Lund University
• Melissa Cardona, Research engineer at the Lund University Social Science Methods Centre

Spoken language: English

Abstract

As elections approach, influential figures intensify their efforts to promote themselves and their agendas on social media, playing a central role in political deliberation within the digital public arena. Social bots have also been found to increase their activity during campaign periods, helping all kinds of actors spread misleading or harmful content at scale. However, in the era of large language models, existing bot-detection methods appear increasingly insufficient for tracking automated activity. Moreover, new forms of automation enabled by social media platforms make non-fully-human activity broader and more complex than the simple classification of “bot” or “not bot.” In this seminar, we present preliminary findings from a study of Swedish anti-gender influencers in the period leading up to the general elections. We examine what they post, how their content performs in terms of engagement, and the extent to which that engagement may be fabricated through both conventional and newer forms of automation.

Registration

To participate is free of charge. 
Sign up at ai.lu.se/2026-06-17/registration and we send you an access link to the zoom platform.