Twitter to Measure Echo Chambers, Unruly Comments on Service
- Company had asked public for metrics on health of discourse
- Leiden, Oxford Universities chosen to work with social network
Photographer: Alex Flynn/Bloomberg
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Twitter Inc. is working with researchers on ways to measure the health of discourse on the social network, part of a broader effort to clean up its service.
Academics, led by researchers at Leiden University, will develop metrics to assess the extent to which people acknowledge and engage with diverse viewpoints on Twitter, the company wrote Monday in a blog post. A second set of metrics will try to spot incivility and intolerance on Twitter. The team will develop algorithms that aim to distinguish between incivility, which can play an important role in political dialogue, and intolerance -- like hate speech and racism -- that’s “threatening to democracy,” Twitter said.