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With this article, we want to contribute to a more comprehensive examination of the ways in which bots are constituted, directly or indirectly, in media discourse. Firstly, we map the contemporary news discourse on political bots and the surrounding discursive context in order to create an understanding of how bots, as a concept, are assigned meaning. Secondly, we ask to which political conflict lines such representations are discursively connected and related, thereby investigating the symbolic and rhetorical role of bots in the construction of political conflicts. We do this by analysing a data set consisting of Swedish print news media articles published during 2018 and 2022. Key results following the analysis are that political bots, bundled together with artificial intelligence (AI) and other various manifestations of digital communication technologies, are constructed as an integral part of the social media machinery in terms of a risk to the well-functioning democracy in contemporary society. In Swedish news media discourse, bots, algorithms, AI and their deployment across various social media platforms are portrayed as a clear danger to the capacities of deliberative democracy. Analysing these news media narratives, it could be argued that they bear traits similar to those of a moral panic reaction.

Automated social agents-bots-are increasingly central to digital environments, yet definitions of what constitutes a bot vary across expert communities. This article analyses how bots are conceptualised in academic and technological discourse by examining scholarly publications (Scopus) and developer discussions (Stack Overflow). Using computational methods, including keyword-in-context analysis and topic modelling, we trace epistemic differences in bot definitions across disciplines. Findings reveal structural discursive silos, with technical fields emphasising functional properties and social sciences focusing on sociotechnical entanglements. These definitional divergences have implications for research, regulation, and governance in an era of AI-driven automation.