Computational propaganda is the use of computational tools (algorithms and automation) to distribute misleading information using social media networks. The advances in digital technologies and social media resulted in enhancement in methods of propaganda. It is characterized by automation, scalability, and anonymity.

Autonomous agents (internet bots) can analyze big data collected from social media and Internet of things in order to ensure manipulating public opinion in a targeted way, and what is more, to mimic real people in the social media. Coordination is an important component that bots help achieve, giving it an amplified reach. Digital technology enhance well-established traditional methods of manipulation with public opinion: appeals to people's emotions and biases circumvent rational thinking and promote specific ideas.

A pioneering work in identifying and analyzing of the concept has been done by the team of Philip N. Howard at the Oxford Internet Institute who since 2012 have been investigating computational propaganda, following earlier Howard's research of the effects of social media on general public, published, e.g., in his 2005 book New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen and earlier articles. In 2017, they published a series of articles detailing computational propaganda's presence in several countries.

Regulatory efforts have proposed tackling computational propaganda tactics using multiple approaches. Detection techniques are another front considered towards mitigation; these can involve machine learning models, with early techniques having issues such as a lack of datasets or failing against the gradual improvement of accounts. Newer techniques to address these aspects use other machine learning techniques or specialized algorithms, yet other challenges remain such as increasingly believable text and its automation.

Computational propaganda is the strategic posting on social media of misleading information by fake accounts that are automated to a degree in order to manipulate readers.

In social media, bots are accounts pretending to be human. They are managed to a degree via programs, and are used to spread information that leads to mistaken impressions. In social media, they may be referred to as "social bots", and may be helped by popular users that amplify them and make them seem reliable through sharing their content. Bots allow propagandists to keep their identities secret. One study from Oxford's Computational Propaganda Research Project indeed found that bots achieved effective placement in Twitter during a political event.

Bots can be coordinated, which may be leveraged to make use of algorithms. Propagandists mix real and fake users; their efforts make use of a variety of actors, including botnets, online paid users, astroturfers, seminar users, and troll armies. Bots can provide a fake sense of prevalence. Bots can also engage in spam and harassment. They are progressively becoming sophisticated, one reason being the improvement of AI. Such development complicates detection for humans and automatized methods alike.

Bots play an important role not only in the spread of information, but also in shaping how people think, feel, and act online. Research shows that being exposed to bots can change how people see the popularity of certain opinions, often making them believe that a viewpoint is more widely accepted than it actually is. This can lead individuals to adjust their own opinions to match what they think most people believe.