Bogus Grass-Roots Politics on Twitter: Guess Who?
Submitted by Zwoof on May 18, 2011 - 16:24Originally posted on 2010-11-08 19:54:40 -0400 but got stuck in our spam filter...ugh! - GH
Researchers at Indiana University have discovered evidence that political campaigns and special-interest groups are using fake Twitter accounts to create the impression of broad grass-roots political expression.
Who would sink so low?
Menczer says the research group uncovered a number of accounts sending out duplicate messages and also retweeting messages from the same few accounts in a closely connected network. For instance, two since-closed accounts, called @PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25, sent out 20,000 similar tweets, most of them linking to, or promoting, the House minority leader John Boehner's website, gopleader.gov.
Just a couple of "Bad Apples" no doubt.