In the maelstrom of information, opinion and conjecture that is Twitter, the voice of truth and reason does occasionally prevail, according to a new study. Tweets from “official accounts” can slow the spread of rumors on Twitter and correct misinformation that’s taken on a life of its own.
The research team from the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation (emCOMP) Laboratory in the UW Department of Human Centered-Design & Engineering and the Information School’s DataLab presented their findings in a paper at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in March.
“A lot of emergency managers are afraid that the voice of the many drowns out the official sources on Twitter, and that even if they are part of the conversation, no one is going to hear them,” said co-author Elodie Fichet, a UW doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication. “We disproved that and showed that official sources, at least in the cases we looked at, do have a critical impact”. [1]
The many are stupid.
Those who know are always few.
And yet the many, no matter how hard they yell, will always listen.
The silence of truth in a world full of lies is deafening…
Look at the sky…
The matter in the universe screams for attention.
But it is not the screams which we should listen to.
But the quietness of nothing.
This is what existence is.
Everything.
And nothing.
The river makes noise.
The river is silent.
Listen to the stars…
They are here.
Inside.