The Botification of Institutional Entrepreneurship

Social bots are being employed by various parties to shape the beliefs and perceptions of humans through social media discourse. As digital technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence are increasingly being discussed on social media, social bots can play an essential role in their discourse and influence the diffusion of digital technologies. However, this is largely an unexplored area as the phenomenon of social bots is still emerging. In this paper, we explore the role of bots in the social media discourse for the diffusion of digital technologies. We adopt the notion of institutional entrepreneurship and apply a process-centric perspective and an actor-centric perspective to understand how social bots can influence the diffusion of digital technologies. We contribute to IS literature by offering a tentative conceptual framework and a set of preliminary conjectures.