The Science of Truthiness

E IS mC(Square) writes "Researchers at Indiana University have just launched Truthy.indiana.edu, which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.' According to their FAQ, they define 'truthy' thus: 'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution."

Comments

summary:

[FuckingNickName]

If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.

Re:summary:

[gilleain]

Twitter ... consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.

Minor status updates are just that - minor. 24hr news networks can cover the breaking news.

The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.

There are new things that are not a waste of time. Twitter is not among them

Where is the reference to the words origin?

[Zero__Kelvin]

OK. "Truthy", and "Truthiness" are terms coined by Steven Colbert (or one of his writers), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgment?

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[the_humeister]

Truthiness was not coined by him as it was already a valid, albeit obsolete, word. He just attached a new definition to it.

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[JabberWokky]

And you're ignoring Senator Lloyd Bentsen as well... they don't cite him for his coined term "astroturf". And Congress of the 1760s is getting ignored for their contribution of the coined term "Indiana" for the Land of the Indians. Gah! And they missed explaining Jeff Howe's contribution of "crowdsourcing", Richard Dawkins' term "meme", and... wait... YOU! You are ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING for not having explained that your own nom de web is thanks to the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures and the essays of William Thomson, the first Baron Kelvin! Why aren't you giving the good folk of the 13th GCWM any acknowledgement? Hunh? HUNH? ...either that, or coined words simply enter the popular vocabulary and become used as a regular part of the language.

"Science"?

[Jawnn]

In the same sentence with "crowd sourced? Fail.
Look, I detest astroturfing as much as the next person who values "truth", but anyone who cares to look, can see lies and half-truths for what they are. Detecting them, then, is not the problem. The problem is that so many people can't, or won't.

Re:"Science"?

[MacGyver2210]

When most of the science is sociology - a science of human interaction - I think crowd-sourcing is an acceptable way to do experimental data collection.

Well, we can see where this is going

[medcalf]

I cannot see any indication that they have done anything to root out their own prejudgements and assumptions, or even to justify their inclusion. So like most politically-driven attempts at "science," this will doubtless just show the ideological conclusions reached by the creators of this tool (the tools behind the tool, if you will) before they even created it.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[Gription]

The category of "mostly correct" is where the biggest, most destructive lies are.