Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: August 28, 2018

Using Twitter to Visualize Polarization

Center for Data Innovation“MIT Technology Review has created a set of visualizations that uses data about Twitter activity to illustrate the polarization of political discourse in the United States. The visualizations include multiple cluster maps demonstrating that accounts that follow each other tweet similar content. In addition, diagrams show that the most partisan accounts, which include bot accounts that tweet hundreds of times a day, tweet significantly more than accounts in the political center. The visualizations also show the polarization of Turkish and Russian accounts.”

This Browser Extension Is Like an AntiVirus for Fake Photos

Wired: “…Doctored images are the scourge of the web-wide fight against fake news. Tech companies and researchers can analyze the behavior of a typical bot in order to sniff out new ones. They can limit the reach of news outlets that perpetually share stories flagged as false. They can see when accounts are coordinating their… Continue Reading

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2018

Lott, John R., Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2018 (August 14, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3233904 “Despite the expectations of many after the 2016 elections, the number of concealed handgun permits has increased for the second year in a row. In 2018, the number of concealed handgun permits soared to now over… Continue Reading

Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime

Müller, Karsten and Schwarz, Carlo, Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime (May 21, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3082972 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3082972 “This paper investigates the link between social media and hate crime using Facebook data. We study the case of Germany, where the recently emerged right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has… Continue Reading

The best free movies on YouTube

Digital Trends: “Google quietly began rolling out the youtube.com/movies section in 2011. Since then, its library of titles for rent, purchase, or streaming has grown considerably, adding up to more movies than you could watch in a lifetime. If you don’t want to pay for a streaming service like Netflix or HBO, you can view some… Continue Reading

NASA releases thousands of hours of Apollo 11 mission audio

The Hill: “NASA and the University of Texas have teamed up to digitize 19,000 hours of recordings from the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first two people on the moon.  The audio was uploaded to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit website that hosts digitized versions of cultural artifacts. “One of the things that comes… Continue Reading

Google made new search tools to help veterans find better jobs

Google Blog – Helping veterans make their next move in civilian life: “…Through Grow with Google, our initiative to help create opportunities for all Americans, we hope to use our technology to help veterans understand the full range of opportunities open to them across many different fields. Right now those opportunities are getting lost in… Continue Reading

How plastic bags came to rule our lives, and why we can’t quit them.

Via TOPIC: “The story of the plastic bag—the kind that is so ubiquitous in grocery stores, in gutters, in the branches of trees—is a story of persuasion, one that began with a battle between paper and plastic in the hearts of the American people. “People are fond of the old paper bag,” Peter Bunten explained… Continue Reading

Google Search latest target in Trump’s “strategic” push to discredit the news

Quartz: “The White House is “taking a look” into regulating Google, Donald Trump’s top economic advisor said Tuesday morning, after the US president tweeted in the early morning hours that googling “Trump news” turned up too many negative results. Google search results has it “RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories &… Continue Reading

Government Agency Digital Products Case Study Report Now Available

Federal Depository Library Program (FDPL) – “In the fall of 2016, the Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Superintendent of Documents entered into an interagency agreement with the Federal Research Division (FRD) of the Library of Congress to develop and test a methodology for identifying agency digital publishing, dissemination, and preservation policies and practices. The… Continue Reading