SCENARIOS OF USE

The official media, the policy reports, but sometimes also sociological researches and even blogs can provide information that is somehow filtered by various constraints (institutional, political, economic, etc...) and inevitably biased. It can be therefore very hard to grasp what real people are really thinking about a given issue. Or we better say it was very hard, before the development of Twitter, the system of microblogging that allows peope to share short messages, links and fast opinions and thoughts.

For Journalists and Decision Makers the investigation of the "Twittersphere" represents an invaluable way of getting direct access to what the public they are so constantly concerned of is actually thinking and saying about their controversial subject. Here, the investigation of the twittersphere can be defined as a work of digital "rumor detection" with direct access to new and original representations, definitions, little language jokes and other backtalks directly coming from people's real life; while this work was until now somehow fragmented, dispersed, discontinued and difficult to carry on, now journalists and decision-makers are equipped with tools that help them get direct access to the public in the probably most intimate way ever, at home or at their workplace, with the simple and quick use of their desktop PC.

In this page we will present some examples and tools that are offering visualization of the controversial rumors coming from the Twittersphere.

METHODS, TOOLS AND EXAMPLES

1. SIMPLE TWITTER SEARCH

One very simple but effective way to begin investigating rumors about your issue on Twitter is to visit the Twitter website and search your topic with one or more keywords (for example: "swine flu", "nanoparticles", "climate change"), to get direct access to the latest microposts and rumors. More, if you want to have a fast representation of the number of tweets about your controversy and compare among different issues , you can use the Twitter Volume tool

The images below provide some examples of searches done with the Twitter Volume tool, comparing different issues and differen sub-issues, as in the case of nanotechnology.

• Comparison among issues and sub-issue through the use of Twitte Volume?

2. MONITOR THE RUMORS THROUGH MONITTER

Other tools allow more refined and accurate investigations. Monitter is a real-time visualization of Twitter rumors and trends. Type in keywords and see tweets as they occur. It’s the ultimate way to keep informed at a conference, while you are in a meeting, or to see "retweets" in action, in order to investigate the main trends and live developments of your controversy. What is "Retweet"? The art of “retweeting” is best described as taking a twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcasting that same message to your followers. This monitoring allows you to see the tweets and the topics and messages that are more popular among the Twitter users. Monitter also provides the ability to turn the stream into an RSS feed, in order to be always informed. One interesting feature of Monitter is the opportunity to monitor Tweets on a specific area; so if you are intereted in what the people is saying about your controversy in a specific site or geographic domain, you can use this technology to get fast access to this kind of information.

• Tweeter monitor of three controversies: climate change, swine flu, nanoparticles. The pause button on bottom-right allows to stop the flow of tweets and

• Retweet use in the investigation of rumors on the wolf reintroduction controversy protest in American Southwest:
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Attachments of PlatformRumorsDetector