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Ah…Good Ol’ Truthiness

Ah…Good Ol’ Truthiness
10/3/2010
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Suada Kolovic

Who would have thought a word created and popularized by comedian Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” would inspire a new Web project geared toward separating the truth from the “truthy” in political tweets online? For those of you that don’t know, the definition of “truthy” is the art of taking misinformation and dressing it up as fact. The project is mining Twitter to analyze patterns in political discussions, which in turn allows visitors to take a closer look at Twitter trends to stop data manipulation by tech-savvy special-interest groups.

"We're trying to study how information propagates online through social networks, blogging, and social media," said Filippo Menczer, associate professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, who is leading the research.

Do you think special-interest groups attempting to influence Twitter and Google search is a real concern?

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