New Software Judges Blog Credibility

Software that would automatically rate the credibility of blogs on a scale from highly credible to “little credible” is in the works in Austria, Ars Technica reports. The program analyzes the distribution of words in successive blog posts and also compares topics against stories covered in the mainstream media to judge timeliness and accuracy. The developers say they hope it will work without any human input.

“It has shown promising results, we think we are on the right path,” said a researcher from Austria’s Know-Center. “It has to be automatic because it is not possible for customers to label and read all these blogs.” (More blogosphere stories.)