Tiny-BotBuster: Identifying Automated Political Coordination in Digital Campaigns

Automated political campaigns in the digital space can influence electoral votes and tilt the balance of power. We developed a compact ensemble approach named Tiny BotBuster to identify automated bot users, then we applied the Combined Synchronization Index to reveal the political actors working together. We applied our techniques to the 2024 Indonesian Elections, revealing groups of coordinated digital campaigns. We also characterized the coordination-automation interplay, highlighting the use of automation by political parties.