  As social media has permeated large parts of the population it simultaneously
has become a way to reach many people e.g. with political messages. One way to
efficiently reach those people is the application of automated computer
programs that aim to simulate human behaviour - so called social bots. These
bots are thought to be able to potentially influence users' opinion about a
topic. To gain insight in the use of these bots in the run-up to the German
Bundestag elections, we collected a dataset from Twitter consisting of tweets
regarding a German state election in May 2017. The strategies and influence of
social bots were analysed based on relevant features and network visualization.
61 social bots were identified. Possibly due to the concentration on German
language as well as the elections regionality, identified bots showed no signs
of collective political strategies and low to none influence. Implications are
discussed.
