Journal Entry
Blews
March 20th 2008 at 6:03 am
Microsoft has a project going to sort incoming links to a news story based on political bent of the blog and by the emotional response of the linking blog text.
I’m quite intrigued, as I’m always trying tools that will blunt any attempt by myself to surround myself and read only people who think exactly like I do. I think of all the outraged liberals in ‘04 who thought there was no possible way Bush could win because they didn’t know of anyone who was going to vote for him. Or conservative friends who still think Bush has been the greatest president evar! Getting surrounded by bubbles of worldviews that you don’t penetrate out of doesn’t lead to much danger for most people on a daily basis, but for some reason I view it with suspicion (hence comments to me by friends from various sides of the political spectrum that I just like to disagree with everything). I think eventually it bites you in the ass, which is why I reflexively polarize myself into a middle state until I’ve had time to dig deeper to come up with more data.
Microsoft’s project could help an individual like me sort through the news with an extra filter attached.
The hang up: first choosing the political bent of a blog. I wasn’t sure how they did that on first read through. That could lead to all sorts of issues. They’d have to work a bit harder at convincing bloggers about the neutrality of their data (or let the blogs ’self-tag’, which also, however, pollutes the data)…
From their site:
While typical news-aggregation sites do a good job of clustering news stories according to topic, they leave the reader without information about which stories figure prominently in political discourse. BLEWS uses political blogs to categorize news stories according to their reception in the conservative and liberal blogospheres. It visualizes information about which stories are linked to from conservative and liberal blogs, and it indicates the level of emotional charge in the discussion of the news story or topic at hand in both political camps. BLEWS also offers a “see the view from the other side” functionality, enabling a reader to compare different views on the same story from different sides of the political spectrum.
This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen Microsoft do. If it launches.
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7 Responses so far
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1. Chris on Mar 20th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Everyone would self-tag as a moderate with middle of the road views that every decent person shares. Other people are extremists.
I hope it lets you choose your own colours - over here red means socialism and blue means conservatism.
*goes off whistling ‘The Red Flag’*
2. Chris on Mar 20th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Heh, I wrote that comment before I saw your post about you being a die-hard moderate (that post didn’t make it to LJ).
It wasn’t directed at you…
3. Mary Fitz... on Mar 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Well moderates have to fight a war on two fronts unlike the tin-foil beanie brigades on the left and the right, so I think to be a true moderate takes gumption.
4. Scott Janssens on Mar 20th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Microsoft has a lot of cool stuff, both products and technologies, coming in the next several years. This is cool, and more useful for the lay person on a daily basis. PhotoSynth remains the coolest app I’ve ever seen.
5. tobias buckell on Mar 20th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Photosynth is a very cool project!
Also, check out http://www.skewz.com/ as the alternate project to Blews….
6. Greg on Mar 20th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Blews? That name is just asking for trouble. I do like how they try to capture the passion of the linkers with the “heat indicators.”
It is an interesting concept, but I don’t necessarily buy into the whole attempt to fit everything into red/blue, left/right, or rep/dem categories. (Although I really like the Blews attempt at examining fuzziness.)
My own political quirks are legion and I can completely sympathize with those who claim to be undecided — like the NH voters who said they could go with either Obama or McCain.
It is a mixed bag. I know conservative Democrats (Pennsyltucky is loaded with them and Ohio seems to be as well). I also know quite a few Republicans who would be considered liberal democrats if it weren’t for their fiscal views and preppy wardrobe.
Is there anything out there for those who prefer to take the a la carte approach to politics?
7. Scott Janssens on Mar 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am
“Is there anything out there for those who prefer to take the a la carte approach to politics?”
Not in a representational democracy.
In the past I mulled around a story idea where today’s technology allowed a country to become a true democracy. I figured the system would be ruined by radicals as anyone else would be too busy making a living to get by to vote on every little issue. The more I thought about it the more depressing it got and I didn’t want to turn it into a story.