{"601661":{"#nid":"601661","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":"All Followers Are Fake Followers","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIan Bogost, professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology wrote \u003Cem\u003EThe Atlantic\u003C\/em\u003E, January 30, article \u0026ldquo;All Followers Are Fake Followers.\u0026rdquo; The School of Literature, Media, and Communication is part of the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EExcerpt:\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cblockquote\u003E\r\n\u003Cp\u003EExcerpt:\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn the summer of 2015, the game designer Bennett Foddy and I were sloshing down cocktails while waiting for prime dry-aged rib-eye steaks in Midtown Manhattan. We weren\u0026rsquo;t living large, exactly, but we did pause to assess our rising professional fortunes. Among them, both of us seemed to be blowing up on Twitter. \u0026ldquo;Where did all these followers come from?\u0026rdquo; I asked. We\u0026rsquo;d both added tens of thousands of apparent fans over the previous year or so. Foddy, an unpresuming Australian with a doctorate in moral philosophy who now makes video games that purposely abuse their players, encouraged me not to get too chuffed about my entourage. We\u0026rsquo;d both been added to a list of accounts that are recommended to new Twitter users during the sign-up process, he explained. Many of our new followers were fake, created for the purposes of spam or resale. They had followed us automatically\u0026hellip; Ian Bogost is a contributing editor at \u003Cem\u003EThe Atlantic\u003C\/em\u003E. He is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in media studies and a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His latest book is \u003Cem\u003EPlay Anything\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor the full article, visit \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2018\/01\/all-followers-are-fake-followers\/551789\/?utm_source=feed\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThe Atlantic\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E website.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"34554","created_gmt":"2018-01-31 16:01:26","changed_gmt":"2018-01-31 16:01:26","author":"ralu3","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"JS Coon Building","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2018\/01\/all-followers-are-fake-followers\/551789\/?utm_source=feed","dateline":{"date":"2018-01-30T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2018-01-30T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"599763":{"id":"599763","type":"image","title":"Ian Bogost","body":null,"created":"1513011274","gmt_created":"2017-12-11 16:54:34","changed":"1539182171","gmt_changed":"2018-10-10 14:36:11","alt":"Portrait photo of School of Literature, Media, and Communication professor Ian Bogost","file":{"fid":"228650","name":"NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2519019,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/NEW_Preferred2018_IanBogost.jpg?itok=2iLPi4HX"}}},"media_ids":["599763"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1283","name":"School of Literature, Media, and Communication"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"}],"keywords":[{"id":"167076","name":"summer"},{"id":"175600","name":"flower"},{"id":"314","name":"twitter"},{"id":"10788","name":"Midtown"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}