Social Media, Ethics, and Automation

Social Media, Ethics, and Automation#

Free textbook on programming social media bots and considering the ethical implications of having done so.

Automation drives our experience of social media platforms, from timeline feeds to disinformation bots. This book examines social media phenomena, like viral memes, parasocial relationships, and harassment campaigns. This book then explores the ethics of automation on social media platforms by experimenting with computer programs that automate social media actions. This book assume no prior programming experience.

Logo for the book, which looks like a phone with a social media post open, by Kyle Thayer and Susan Notess called "Social Media, Ethics, and Automation." There are various emoji reactions to it.

This book is about:

  • Social Media

    • What it does, how it works, how people use it, different uses and abuses, etc.

  • Ethics

    • Individual behaviors, group behaviors, design and management decisions, etc.

  • Automation

    • basic programming skills in Python, create social media bots, get information from social media platforms, etc.

We hope after completing this book you will be informed and engaged as social media user, as a member of a society where social media plays a large role, and potentially as a worker in a social media company.

Download and Versions#

There are different versions of this book for making bots in different platforms:

Choose Social Media Platform: Reddit | Discord | Bluesky (incomplete) | No Coding

You can download this book as a pdf here (though not everything will work correctly or be interactive as a pdf). (Also, if anyone knows how to make jupyterbooks make separate pdfs for each chapter, please let Kyle know.)

Support this Project#

We are happy to make this book available online for free, but if you find this textbook valuable and want to support our work, please donate to us through Susan’s Ko-Fi account: https://ko-fi.com/drsusannotess.

Suggested Citation#

Kyle Thayer, Susan Notess (2023). Social Media, Ethics, and Automation. https://social-media-ethics-automation.github.io/book