@timhwang's social bot experiment #truthicon

via @flowingdata

#notanonionheadline #realnews

"Before today’s ban, very few Cameroonians were even aware that Twitter was available in Cameroon via SMS, and the majority of those who were did not even grasp its potential as a tool for political activism."

Ugh.

Food for thought.

The president of Paraguay may or may not be tweeting snarkily about his colleagues. Global Voices' Belen Bogado writes about it for the Economist.

False reports on Ushahidi, and how SwiftRiver can help.

gah.

"The Twittersphere is an odd and uncanny place. It’s something like having fairies at the bottom of your garden. How do you know anyone is who he/she says he is, especially when they put up pictures of themselves that might be their feet, or a cat, or a Mardi Gras mask, or a tin of Spam?"

"For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved."

"Last week’s riots led to something of a phenomenon in Uganda. In a country that has only recently gotten access to a fibre-optic cable and where a tiny fraction of the population are online, the Internet, for the first time, played a central role in disseminating information."

Jon's thoughts on how to improve the flow of data during crisis, based on the Kampala riots.

"@rmugabe–Karibu! Twitter is the new revolution! Mbasongo & Biya are already on. Convince Mubarak, Compaoré & other comrades 2 join. A luta continua!"

"We face at least three filters in the voices we hear - access, language and bias."

"It's now been more than two weeks since the election, and although the prospects of the Iranian protest movement remain uncertain, the future of the world's armchair revolutionaries looks bright."

thoughts on twitter, africa, and refurbished computers

"What’s really interesting to me is the extent to which news reporters seem to have chosen Twitter as the go-to source for reactions to news events. It makes sense - there’s a premium in the news business on speed, on having a story faster than anyone else does, so the need for the quick quote makes Google hours to slow to help you. And the 140 character limit guarantees that whoever you quote will be pithy and limited to a single soundbite.

This, in turn, also increases the chance that you’ll be wrong."

"Look for sources that disprove your thesis. Go outside the country and outside your comfort zone. See what, say, China's news agency reports about the protests."

"Imagine, for a second, if banks had been run by Tweet instead of by executive suite: would Wall Street have been able to loot its depositors silly? Nope. Authentic value doesn't hide in the shadows."

useful tips on navigating Twitter's database

"In my view, people who point to the low number of Twitter users in Moldova as proof of the mythical nature of the subject have conceptual difficulties understanding how networks work."

wondering why I haven't seen this until now

",,,the medium is hard to dismiss as a reporters' tool, particularly in countries where cell-phone networks reach farther than the internet. At 4:53 am local time on January 18th Juliana Rotich, a blogger in Kenya, tweeted in her own cablese, “in town n