ABSTRACT
Waking up one winter morning, you log on to Twitter and tweet, ‘Good morning. It’s cold again today’ ( Ohayō. Kyō mo samui ). This elicits a dozen or so responses from your followers. Some of these followers use as their Twitter IDs the names of characters from anime (Japanese animation). A few Twitter IDs include the suffix ‘bot’. Steeling yourself for the day and stepping out the door, you tweet, ‘Another day of work. I’m heading to the office’ ( Kyō mo shigoto da. Ittekimasu ). Again you receive responses, several from bots, who say, ‘Have a good day!’ ( Itterasshai! ). What is this ‘bot’ trying to do?
