By Nic Newman Senior Researcher City University, London
Every day more and more content is created and distributed through social media, but the key problem for consumers and professional journalists alike is how to find the good bits.
The Social Sensor project is looking to find new ways of solving this filter problem. What algorithms can identify the best tweets, pictures or videos? How can we separate truth from lies in the heat of a fast moving news story?
Many of these issues were laid bare on election night (November 6th 2012) when in addition to traditional television and web coverage the drama of the night was also played out on Facebook and Twitter. We set out to monitor the range of conversations and identify the kind of information that could have been useful to professional journalists