#733: Do Anti-democratic Bots Dream of Digital Riots? Modeling Anti-democratic Decision-making and Collective Knowledge Construction Using Natural Language Processing

We introduce a tool for visualizing reasoning trajectories in online interactions. We leverage natural language processing to corpora from Brazilian communities involved in anti-democratic speech to compare bots’ and people’s trajectories around “discourse crossroads” where epistemic stances towards democratic norms shift. We hope to inform tools and intervention design that guide epistemic trajectories toward more productive engagement, highlighting the role of civic education and digital literacy in fostering critical dialogue.