Writing in Der Spiegel online, Sascha Lobo, the German blogger and digital sceptic, recently expressed his displeasure at the rapid spread of “blitz-hatred, bang-stupidity and readiness to violence” openly “spat out” on the web. According to a new study, however, it is not only human beings, with all their flaws, who influence sentiment online. Research reveals that robots, or social bots, are increasingly trolling on the internet by writing inflammatory texts and comments. The study into these ‘spamming bots’, led by Simon Hegelich, a German political analyst, examines how, and how often, social bots troll on the internet. That robots