Conceptualizing the evolving nature of computational propaganda: a systematic literature review

Since the 2016 U.S. election and the U.K. Brexit campaign, computational propaganda has become an important research topic in communication, political and social science. Recently, it has become clearer that computational propaganda doesn’t start from a clean slate and is not precisely bound to single issues or campaigns. Instead, computational propaganda needs to be looked at as a complex phenomenon in a global environment of co-evolving issues and events, emerging technologies, policies and legal frameworks, and social dynamics. Here, we review the literature on computational propaganda from this perspective and theorize this evolving and longitudinal nature of computational propaganda campaigns through the lens of relational dynamics. Our conceptual contribution forms the basis for a new kind of empirical research on computational propaganda that is aware of the complex interdependencies, feedback cycles and structural conditions that are elusive when focusing on individual campaigns and short time frames.