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The US Air Force is Spending $450K to Study Blogs

Joshua Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo notes that The Air Force is funding a $450K 3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."

Among the things they've figured out so far, doh:

"It can be challenging for information analysts to tell what's important in blogs unless you analyze patterns," [senior scientist Brian] Ulicny said.

and

One of the problems analysts may have with blog monitoring, Ulicny noted, is there is too much actionable information for the analyst to properly analyze.

and

"Blog entries have a different structure," Ulicny said. "They are typically short and are about something external to the blog posting itself , such as a news event. It's not uncommon for a blogger to simply state, 'I can't believe this happened,' and then link to a news story."

In other words, another study of the obvious, and no mention of conversations with actual bloggers. More like studying a frog under a microscope.

Hat tip to Alice Marshall

Categories: Blogging and Moblogging

Tags: air_force_blogger_study

BL Ochman | Jul 3 06 1:03 | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Hmm Interesting wasting money is the government past-time.

Posted by: Alex at July 3, 2006 7:44 PM

They're not just "studying" blogs. It's Anti-terrorism. The network of information passed through internet bulletin boards is a point of interest for the Inteligence field. Terrorist cells use these blogs and bulletin boards to pass critical information to each other everyday.

Waste of money? You're right, the 9/11 attacks were probly never mentioned on internet before it happened...

Posted by: Brooks at February 20, 2008 4:09 PM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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