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University Researches Software to Detect Political Affiliation of Weblogs

Filed under “Blogging,” “Software,” “Privacy,” “Culture,” “Writing,” and “Politics”
by Adam at 12:39 PM on May 21, 2004

1 Comment

A study is underway at the University of North Carolina to measure the political leanings of bloggers based on reader response. The ultimate goal is to develop a software program that can do this automatically. Doesn’t this seem creepy to anyone?

I can see the potential benefits from the content aggregation / portal perspective, but couldn’t we just rely on self-reporting for this rather than having a piece of code running around the web classifying people? What if such a technology were misused by an oppressive political regime, either here in America or abroad, to identify troublesome dissenters. Bloggers have already been arrested in China and Iran for what they publish online. Do we really want to make it easier for this to happen?

(citation: Needlenose)

Adam is a web developer and graphic designer who lives and works in south-central Kansas. He likes to speak his mind, both here and in his business blog. He only rarely writes about himself in the third person, honest. If you’d like to work with Adam, drop him a line.

1 Comment »

  1. Hmm.

    If you need software to figure out the political orientation of blog posters, you are probably working in the present White House, and share many attributes with the man in charge.
    Run that through your program and tell me what you get!

    Comment by Jeff — April 19, 2005 @ 4:59 am

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