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.

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.

"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.