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Friday, February 8, 2013

Social networks like indoctrination centers


Simply enter a story that questions the Venezuelan Chavez, and you will see that some of the comments it generates will be hard attacks on the media that published it, accusing him of "imperialist" or right agent. These comments come through very active profiles in social networks, commenting on various media. Venezuela has an 'army' of twitterers who speak of the wonders of Chavez, revolution, socialism of the XXI century and rail against a new enemy every day. In the last hours has been the former Spanish president Felipe González. A regional governor accused him of being behind the false picture of Hugo Chavez who published The Country ; immediately, the device information spreads in social networks and what their motorized time, Chavez supporters expanded harder. An interesting article in El Pais reviews the formulas regímentes as Syrian, Iranian or China , among others, control communication that spreads in social networks. Syria has the Syrian Electronic Army , an army operating on the web and broadcast messages for Bashar Al Assad and hacks pages rebels sectors , so that they become inaccessible. Explains Jillian C. York, director of the Institute for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier  Foundation, the strategy of Syria, "unlike Ben Ali or Mubarak, has maintained a certain freedom to post messages, but it has ensured that the officer is also released by their own hackers ", as published by El PaisThe strategy is quite logical when one remembers the impact that social networks were during the Arab SpringDespite controls on the media at that time, thousands of people gathered at the speed autoconvocados Twitter. The emergence of the Indignados in Spain, had a powerful slogan during the days of mass protests against the Puerta del Sol: Real Democracy Now!  Some youth awoke to a political activity that had never before experienced. Twitter is an infinite space of broadcast messagingJust as the media publish news and links to our content, governments, youth political groups, companies, NGOs propagate their own information and messages. Traffic from social networks in Latin America places Facebook in the first place, in some countries over the long leader Google. Twitter has an audience beyond the media leaders. This reality makes the networks in a large area of " extreme democracy", as defined by Cristian Lumezanu, Research Department of Informatics, University of Princeton. "Each person is his own editor, and anyone can say whatever he wants, without limitation or censorship. Is freedom of expression ", says in The País.comAlong with social networks, blogs also adopted a relevant role . In Argentina, a serious battle between the country and the government in 2008 led to the creation of a "cyber army K '  which consisted of the proliferation of bloggers who wrote in favor of the government and the opposition strong questions ."Militancy" was enhanced in social networks, with the help of these bloggers and community managers who tuiteaban messages against activists of the field, the Clarín group and the opposition. In Spain, the presidential election that gave victory to Mariano Rajoy also had a strong component of social media activism, both the PP and the PSOE. "Social networks are increasingly integrated into our culture and people are getting used to using them as sources of information. It is very important to know where it comes distinguish this information, "said Nick Feamster, who led a study of Georgia Tech University on social networks.

How to spot a propagandist in networks

Activists spread messages in social networks can be identified. The study by Georgia Tech University reveals four characteristics.

1 - Send a lot of tweets in a short period.
2 - retweet extraneous content.
3 - Share of other content quickly.
4 - Coordinates with other users the proliferation of certain messages.

Additionally it can detect other details like that c uentan with few followers (followers), prevent the spread of personal content, follow similar profiles . Social networks have enhanced transparency of communication, have been footing the profile of a large company to a private citizen, but the network users need to pay attention to the messages and messengers. Publishing false information can be very expensive, because a wrong tweet triggered a complaint from other users who discover the lie, the failure or the intended message. 

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