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🌱 @IsThisAnExpert: The ClimateChange Hackathon bot!

It can be difficult for the average user of a social media platform to identify if a post on the climate crisis is based on a reliable source or misinformation. As a consequence, erroneous ‘news’ are reproduced or go viral. Some users even intentionally mislead the internet community. This behaviour can cause confusion in raising awareness and taking action on the climate crisis. @IsThisAnExpert is a Twitter bot that helps users see the credibility of another user on the climate crisis. Reply to a post on climate change to @IsThisAnExpert and it will run an assessment on the credibility of the user and their expertise on climate change. Created for the ClimateChange Hackaton in frame of the GENERATION A — project.

What it does

  1. Parses a manually curated list of experts and assigns a credibility score following a credibility score equation (see below).
  2. Populates a MariaDB database with relevant user information.
  3. Opens a stream on Twitter to hear any post with an @IsThisAnExpert mention.
  4. Calculates the credibility score for the user posting the message where the bot is called.*
  5. Replies to the mention with a message with the credibility score of the person.

Credibility score

A user’s credibility score is calculated by tweets and retweets of credible sources. A scientist affiliated with the IPCC, a reputable institution, many publications and citations (therefore a high h-index) will have a high credibility score. A random user that has frequently retweeted the IPCC report will be assigned with a higher credibility score than Donald Trump who does not make references to credible sources.

*on development, currently calculates the cred_score for the users on the curated list

Install

  1. Install required tools (developed on Fedora 32 unix distribution)
    • sudo yum install python3-devel mysql-devel gcc
  2. Create a Twitter application, and generate keys, tokens etc.
  3. Modify the variables in the access.py file and add keys, tokens etc. for connecting to your Twitter app.
  4. Install the java-credibility-tool
  5. Download or git clone the clima_bot:
    • git clone https://github.com/franasa/clima_bot
  6. Install the climabot:
    • cd into climabot and run pip install .

Requirements

  • ~/.my.cnf file with database connection parameters
  • Python 3+
  • Twitter developer account
  • Java JRE 8
  • MySQL/MariaDB

Usage

database

Script to populate a MySQL/MariaDB with Twitter handles of a manually parsed list of experts.

usage:

  • db_query_api.py [-h] [-p CSV_FILE] [-d MARIADB_GROUP] [-u USER_HANDLE]

arguments:

  • -h, --help
    show help message and exit

  • -d MARIADB_GROUP, --mariadb_group
    name of the MariaDB group on the .my.cnf config file with connection parameters

  • -p CSV_FILE, --csv_file path to the csv file with the twitter handles

  • -u USER_HANDLE, --user_handle use to query/insert one user handle at a time

note : -p and -u are mutually exclusive arguments.

running the bot

Main script of the climabot to automatically reply to mentions with the calculated credibility score

usage:

  • clima_bot.py [start] [path]

positional arguments:

  • start start the bot

  • path path to the java-credibility-tool

to deploy the bot for automatically reply any mention run:

$ clima_bot.py  start <path>/credibility-0.0.7.jar

🎉