In a paper published by Panagiotis Takis Metaxas and Eni Mustafaraj, the researchers examined more than 185,000 campaign-related tweets and retweets during the week leading up to the election, reports the Boston Globe.
"One of the more active accounts was one that was tied to the American Future Fund, a conservative organization based in Iowa that also ran television ads critical of Coakley," the Globe reported.
The researchers said a surge of more than 900 tweets in a two-hour period from accounts tied to the AFF spread misinformation about Coakley to Twitter users. This constituted an attack, the researchers argue, which they call a "Twitter-bomb."
Metaxas said in a press release that the researchers identified more than 60,000 people who received the messages on Twitter, and noted that real-time search on Google gave the tweets more prominence.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2398-Boston-Top-News-Examiner~y2010m5d4-Cyber-attack-Scott-Brown-supporters-used-Twitter-to-bomb-Martha-CoakleyHere is the Boston Globe article -
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2010/05/coakley_targete.html
In the course of the research, they found that one of the more active accounts was one that was tied to the American Future Fund, a conservative organization based in Iowa that also ran television ads critical of Coakley. But because messages were done anonymously through a social networking site, it would have been difficult for any voter to tie the messages to the group.
The firm apparently set up nine accounts that sent 929 tweets over the course of about two hours – a method the study refers to as a “Twitter-bomb.” Those messages would have reached about 60,000 people, according to the authors.
The research paper, “From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-Time Search,” was presented last week at a conference in Raleigh, N.C. The paper, which won the conference’s Best Paper Award
The paper that the Boston Globe spoke of is here:
http://journal.webscience.org/317/2/websci10_submission_89.pdf In 2004, I always thought the toughest problem with the SBVT is that there were not one or even 10 charges, there was a cluster bomb with hundreds of lies. Kerry and his team would spend time and energy definitively proving that one was a lie - and the liars would shift to several others. Even after they disproved more than 100 lies, to many it looked like there still were questions. It is sad that 6 years later, these lies still surface on message boards when Kerry's name is mentioned. In 2008, Kerry created "truth fights back" to help Democratic candidates fight back the type of lies spread by ads and chain emails. President Obama had his own group, Stop the Smears (I think). But, you still have an incredible minority of people who believe some of the garbage thrown at Obama - even refusing to believe where he was born - even though the state of Hawaii confirmed it and it was in local papers when he was born.
It is sad that these sleazes so quickly figure out how to use each new technology to spread lies. A big question is how you deal with these types of attacks. It is very easy to see that the same creeps will do the same for 2010 races - especially when the Democrat is not super well known to everyone in the state or where he/she is even close to vulnerable.
Years ago, one of my daughters in choosing readings for her Bat Mitzvah, chose one that I remember now reading this. The story, took place in an eastern European shetl, where a man came to a rabbi asking how he should go about making up for having spread lies about a neighbor. The rabbi responded that he should take a feather pillow, cut it open and take it out into the wind ... and then collect all the feathers. The man looked at the rabbi as though he was crazy and said that there was no way to collect all the feathers. The rabbi pointed out that the same was true of the lies - he really could not "collect" all of them - and this was why spreading malicious gossip was such an evil thing to do and that he had to do his best to counter the lie he started. (I likely mangled the story, but the point is correct.)
Even then, before technology, the rapid geometric propagation of a lie meant it could not easily be spun in. Now this is on steroids.
The real question is whether there should be some control on this - respecting freedom of speech, but preventing these outrageous abuses. (I know I am partisan, but they seem to be all from the right - including Bush's attacks on McCain. Yet, it was Palin who seemed to get the most sympathy from the media that she was being mistreated by attacks. )
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