Research index · Bots, influence operations, and AI agents

From Bots to Agents

A curated index of research on bot detection and its limits, coordinated inauthentic behavior, influence operations, and the shift from scripted automation to LLM-driven agents. Each entry carries a plain-language note on what the paper actually shows and what it is good for citing, plus a citation-ready BibTeX record. Grouped by era, from the bot-detection years through the generative-AI shift to LLM agents and the defenses that follow.

Emilio Ferrara · University of Southern California · emiliofe@usc.edu · emilio.ferrara.name · Google Scholar
Work on AI itself — model safety, auditing and bias, agentic systems, generative-AI risk — is indexed separately on the AI research page.
All entries verified against Crossref and the arXiv API, 18–19 July 2026.

Three corrections worth knowing

The election-interference taxonomy is often cited from its 2024 SSRN preprint. The version of record is First Monday 30(6), 2025 — cite that one.

The ICWSM 2020 inverse-reinforcement-learning paper is frequently cited with a truncated title. The full title carries the subtitle “A Case Study of Russian Trolls in the 2016 US Election.”

The 2024 cross-platform operations paper exists as an SSRN preprint with a different author order. The version of record is First Monday 29(11): Minici, Cinus, Luceri, Ferrara.