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Credit: Image from Pixabay

Twitter bots are often used to spread mis- and disinformation and there is no shortage of them on the platform, so how can we separate them from true eyewitness acounts?

Researcher and trainer Henk Van Ess has created a 10-step video tutorial published on Poynter, in which he explains how these bots are set up and how journalists can identify them.

Looking at when the Twitter account was created and the first tweets it sent can give you an idea of its authenticity, and you can also use tools such as Tweetbeaver to see how many times a user has mentioned a particular word.

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