political bots on twitter in #ecuador2017 presidential campaigns

We studied the behavior of campaign hashtags on Twitter in the second round of Ecuador 2017 presidential elections. The study analyzed 10 trending hashtags attacking opponents. The data was captured and analyzed with NodeXL, an application used to analyze social network. The analysis verifies the central role of automated accounts or botnets in the creation of hashtags. The campaign against the opposing binomial, which combined real accounts of government party activists with botnets, was more effective versus the less coordinated opposition campaign against candidate Lenin Moreno. It also verifies the use of localized botnets, mainly in Argentina and Venezuela.