Namibia is one of the countries that always tries to be on par or at least be way far from fellow developing countries in many aspects, press freedom of which it is the best in Africa, Conservancies management which lead to the former Commonwealth Secretary General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku now World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Chief presenting an award to Namibia last year and the country also held the World Adventure Travel Summit, the first to be held in Africa also last year. On the Information Communication Technology ICT, Namibia is also on the forefront and is currently improving its Communication policy especially the aspects of the internet and the social media management.
But recently, Namibia complained of unidentified groups that seemed to have been smear-campaigning the country in the aspects of tourism. Such groups were reported to have been spreading false information about the country and hacking some of the government webistes.And although government has been busy trying to find as to how exactly that might have happened and who the exact culprints were, such groups are yet to be identified.
Today, I read that some innovators and great minds overseas are busy researching a system that is able to detect that particular information on the social media is not true and reliable. Such a system will be called a lie detector. This means, it will be used to test the potential rumours via various posts on the social media including facebook and twitter. As i was reading about this story, I immediately thought, this could be good, not only for individuals, businesses or groups, but also for governments like ours here in Namibia which has already been challenged by the unknown groups which seemed to have repoorted on information that was said to be incorrect. Namibia usually is fast to make use of systems that further advancement or add value to its various developmental processes in various aspects.
I learnt about the liar detector story through the Web 2.0 for development commuity information sharing platforms of which I am now a member after I attended the Web 2.0 for development training course at the university of Namibia, UNAM - sponsored by CTA ACP-EU. But the initial story originated from the BBC's technology news reports.
It is an interesting report, that is why I decided to share thish content with you so that you can trace the report, read and analyze it to empower yourself. I then was wondering how such a lie detector could benefit individuals like me - and web users in general. At the moment, there are so many of us who love to share content, but to verify the authenticity of some information is a big challenge at the moment. Therefore, once the system is ready - web users will be able to be alerted on the various information which will apparently be classified in terms of various categories - which will include speculations, misinformation which has to do with the spreading of wrong information unwittingly and disinformation which means spreading information with an intention to cause damage or harm.
From the information I gathered, - there is need to have such a software that will warn online or web users about potential false content - as a way to see which reports are reliable and which not. The idea to come up with the research on the discovery of the software reportedly was necessitated by the 2011 countless reports, some of them untrustworthy which related to the riots that was being organized in London. Some web users would just write content which was not true at all as an attempt to organize themselves and their supporters, causing panic and fear as well as confusion among the content consumers
As a result, some companies advanced the idea to rather do away with social media as it was resulting in false information. But others were not in favour of it and that is why the university of Sheffield (under the leadership of the Lead Researcher Dr Kalina Botscheva) that is carrying the research thought it was necessary to find a strategy to deal with the would-be inaccurate or false content on the web.
This new way of managing web content in terms of reliability and credibility is therefor said to not only good for individuals, businesses, but also for governments as it would alert them on such unwanted information. This system is expected to be operational in the not too distant future. Therefore, next time you and me write about content that we intent to post on the web, we have to think carefully - especially if it is not true as the liar deterctor will defnity do its job. and you do not want to be the first to be caught and therefore labelled as the liar for social media information - as per that detector.
What are your thoughts about this envisaged innovation ??
.
But recently, Namibia complained of unidentified groups that seemed to have been smear-campaigning the country in the aspects of tourism. Such groups were reported to have been spreading false information about the country and hacking some of the government webistes.And although government has been busy trying to find as to how exactly that might have happened and who the exact culprints were, such groups are yet to be identified.
Today, I read that some innovators and great minds overseas are busy researching a system that is able to detect that particular information on the social media is not true and reliable. Such a system will be called a lie detector. This means, it will be used to test the potential rumours via various posts on the social media including facebook and twitter. As i was reading about this story, I immediately thought, this could be good, not only for individuals, businesses or groups, but also for governments like ours here in Namibia which has already been challenged by the unknown groups which seemed to have repoorted on information that was said to be incorrect. Namibia usually is fast to make use of systems that further advancement or add value to its various developmental processes in various aspects.
I learnt about the liar detector story through the Web 2.0 for development commuity information sharing platforms of which I am now a member after I attended the Web 2.0 for development training course at the university of Namibia, UNAM - sponsored by CTA ACP-EU. But the initial story originated from the BBC's technology news reports.
It is an interesting report, that is why I decided to share thish content with you so that you can trace the report, read and analyze it to empower yourself. I then was wondering how such a lie detector could benefit individuals like me - and web users in general. At the moment, there are so many of us who love to share content, but to verify the authenticity of some information is a big challenge at the moment. Therefore, once the system is ready - web users will be able to be alerted on the various information which will apparently be classified in terms of various categories - which will include speculations, misinformation which has to do with the spreading of wrong information unwittingly and disinformation which means spreading information with an intention to cause damage or harm.
From the information I gathered, - there is need to have such a software that will warn online or web users about potential false content - as a way to see which reports are reliable and which not. The idea to come up with the research on the discovery of the software reportedly was necessitated by the 2011 countless reports, some of them untrustworthy which related to the riots that was being organized in London. Some web users would just write content which was not true at all as an attempt to organize themselves and their supporters, causing panic and fear as well as confusion among the content consumers
As a result, some companies advanced the idea to rather do away with social media as it was resulting in false information. But others were not in favour of it and that is why the university of Sheffield (under the leadership of the Lead Researcher Dr Kalina Botscheva) that is carrying the research thought it was necessary to find a strategy to deal with the would-be inaccurate or false content on the web.
This new way of managing web content in terms of reliability and credibility is therefor said to not only good for individuals, businesses, but also for governments as it would alert them on such unwanted information. This system is expected to be operational in the not too distant future. Therefore, next time you and me write about content that we intent to post on the web, we have to think carefully - especially if it is not true as the liar deterctor will defnity do its job. and you do not want to be the first to be caught and therefore labelled as the liar for social media information - as per that detector.
What are your thoughts about this envisaged innovation ??
.
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