Über die Potentiale digitaler Bots

Interview: Maike Janssen

Immer häufiger sind Online-Gesprächspartner keine Menschen, sondern Bots. In sozialen Netzwerken können sie öffentliche Meinungen beeinflussen, sie können – sinnvoll eingesetzt – aber auch wichtige Funktionen in der Kommunikation auch von NGOs übernehmen. Mit Amir Shevat, einem Plattform Manager des Messaging-Dienstes Slack, sprachen wir über die Potentiale digitaler Bots.

Digital bots or human community managers: Who is more helpful in what kinds of situation?

Community engagement is very personal, I would prefer a human community manager. I would add a bot assistant to the community manager to handle things like feedback collection, on-boarding of new members and FAQ.

How can digital bots help us to better understand what’s going on in public debates and discussions? How can they enable us to better participate ourselves in public discussions on the web/in social networks? 

Bots can collect and digest large amounts of information and provide it in a delightful and actionable way to users, in this way bots can help you stay up to date with complex issues.  

How can bots be used to leverage internal communications?

Bots never sleep, they are always in your timezone, this makes bot very effective bridging the gap between distributed teams. Howdy for example is a bot that facilitates checkins in teams across the glob.  

How can NGOs and charities make use of bots – for their campaigning, fundraising or marketing activities? 

Yes, there are a lot of marketing bots, communication bots, and productivity an task bots that can help NGOs with their work on Slack at slack.com/apps.