Trails of Propagation

"The Internet is full of lies", is a claim that is often heard in social gatherings, followed by an example of an outrageous claim that the speaker found unbelievable. But is it so? And who puts forth such lies? How many people are exposed to them? Can these lies be detected using algorithms, in an automatic of semi-automatic manner?

We would like to know the answers to these questions too! Welcome to "Trails of Propagation", a research project at the Social Informatics Lab at Wellesley that studies how information propagates on Twitter. The project is directed by P. Takis Metaxas and Eni Mustafaraj and is managed by Samantha Finn. For more information about the people involved in Trails research, please visit the people page.

The best way to be informed about our Twitter Trails project is to take a look at our blog, where we post regularly on interesting stories that have been propagated on Twitter.

Or, if you would want to try it right away, take a look at our twittertrails.com site.

 

In addition to the Twitter Trails project, we are working on several other projects including Social Media and Politics, especially the challenges of Predicting Elections, and designing visualizations and algorithms to measure Political Polarization online. If you would like to learn more , please visit our network visualizations and publications.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation.