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.

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.

"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."

Hat tip to Alice Marshall

Hmm Interesting wasting money is the government past-time.

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...