CCT+300+Lab+4

=Lab 4 = Commment and reflect on the following article: []

An internet meme is an image, video, story or joke that is voluntarily passed from one internet user to another via e-mail, blogs and social networking sites. People use internet memes to create smear campaigns, spread gossip, create a hoax and advertise a product or service. One example is the twitter bomb campaign created by the AFF. This campaign was created to go against Martha Coakley, a democrat. This caused the Republican challenger Scott Brown to win after the AFF set up nine Twitter accounts and sent out 929 tweets in two hours, which reached 60, 000 people. This is a great example of how much pollution there is on the internet. Menczer and his colleagues have created a website, truthy.indiana.edu, to tackle this problem of “truthiness”. This website uses the Twitter API to measure how truthy a tweet is. This system uses crowdsourcing to determine if the tweet is honest or not. It does this by tallying up the number of visitors who click on the “Truthy” button. I believe this website is a very valuable resource in our modern media. Most of us are given information from social networking sites but have no way of telling if they are true or not. Its “truthiness” can only be measured by getting feedback from a vast number of people. For example if someone told you something, you would have to believe it unless another person or a group of people tell you it is wrong or if it is correct. This is the same with gossip, gossip spreads like wildfire but it can be the wrong information and yet people would believe it. The “Truthy” button is very useful in all social media, only if it was possible to incorporate this into our daily conversations, we would be safe from BS and other forms of misinformation from others, especially politicians.

**Works Cited** "Internet Meme - Computer Dictionary Definition." Computer, Hacker, Telecom Dictionary Definitions. Web. 06 Oct. 2010. []. "Tweety Profs Offer Political Smear-meme 'truthiness' Ratings • The Register." The Register: Sci/Tech News for the World. Web. 06 Oct. 2010. [].