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

Recorded lunch seminar 17 June 2026

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

Speakers: 

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.

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Last updated: 17 Jun 2026