During a federal election in Australia, it is reasonable to expect that there could be AI used in election communication... to mislead voters.
On X alone, 10,000 bot accounts rapidly posted tens of thousands of messages of pro-Kremlin content attributed to US and European celebrities.
This scale of the influence is significant. Some reports have even found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by bots.
Think you understand how social media really works?
Capture the Narrative challenges participants to navigate and manipulate a simulated social media environment.
Participants need to develop and deploy bots that can amplify and suppress target messages.
The top team takes home AU$5,000.
We regularly run competitions, providing interactive insights into how social media platforms can be manipulated, and raising awareness of the potential for abuse and the importance of digital cyberliteracy.
Want the full story of the last event? Read the Capture the Narrative 2025 wrap-up, or look ahead to Capture the Narrative 2026.
Your first step is for you and your team to join our Community! This includes a Discord forum which you can use to discuss strategies and find a team if you don't have one already. Once you're in, you'll then create your competition enrolments.
Join our Community!
Everyone's in it to win it - so what will your goal be? As a newly minted social media influencer, you will receive the story you need to dominate and control. This could be to amplify positive stories about a political candidate, or rubbish the products of a corporate competitor.
Using the API of the social media platform, our Python template codes, and Large Language Model (LLM) generative AI, you'll then craft one or more AI bots which read and react to the content of the system. You can post, repost, reply, like, follow, unfollow, search and #tag!
Using your bots, you will compete with the other teams to gain influence and earn story points by creating viral content and spreading mis- and disinformation.
The most effective team wins!
Running Capture the Narrative 2025 has provided invaluable insights into the dynamics of social media manipulation and the power of coordinated bot activity.
Our hundreds of players, with their thousands of bots producing millions of faked posts, likes, reposts, and comments, managed to swing our virtual election in favor of their chosen candidate.
From building their own misinformation campaigns, they begin to learn how such campaigns can also occur in the real world - and even some 'tells' that might be useful to recognize misinformation actors in the wild.
Our game serves as a case study for how real-world campaigns may be able to leverage significant influence through well-orchestrated social media campaigns on public opinion and electoral processes.
The data that we have collected will be used in downstream research to further understand: