Reuters tool to verify news on Twitter
An undoubtedly relevant topic in the news is the criticism of popular social media sites, such as Facebook, that perpetuate the dissemination of false information through fake news sites. Reuters recently released a tool to detect these types of false news articles using an algorithm that closely relates to the contents of the Networks course. The technology is able to collect real-time tweets and analyze the data by grouping the information into clusters by topic. Reuters also designed the algorithm “to think like a reporter” by assigning a credibility score to each cluster by taking into account factors, such as the author’s location and identity.
This article relates to the content of the course in two ways. First, the motive for Reuters to develop this technology stems from a problem of information cascades which lead the public to consume false news information. Because people tend to model their own individual behavior based on the actions of others, it is not surprising that heavily curated social media sites, such as Facebook, have led to the spread of fake news. Second, this article is relevant because the way in which Reuters developed its algorithm draws parallels to network theory in that the content of the analyzed tweets can be modeled using graph theory and grouped together based on similarities. The tweets represent a network of data that can be examined to glean insights regarding the reliability of its content.
Source:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/1/13804542/reuters-algorithm-breaking-news-twitter