A new technology that can draw a distinction between false rumors and truth on social networking services including Twitter has been developed in Korea, the world’s most wired country.

A research team led by professor Cha Mee-young of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology announced Thursday that it is now possible to filter out false rumors with over 90 percent accuracy.

“Rumors characteristically spread through arbitrary users. There was a clearly discernible pattern in their use of language, starting off with words that clearly evade responsibility from the truth,” said professor Cha. 

The research was based on an analysis of more than 100 tweets from the U.S. concerning politics, celebrity gossip, IT, health and other fields. The results showed the method was especially effective in distinguishing slander aimed at certain persons and institutions, often far from the truth.

She hinted that the technology would be applicable to Korea after gathering a sufficient amount of domestic data. The findings were published at the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining held in December last year.

By Yoon Ha-youn, Intern reporter
(yhayoun@heraldcorp.com)