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http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2011/tc20110411_512316.htm

How Twitter Could Unleash World Peace

 

Twitter comes with alot of benficies to people. It makes us feel connected to complete strangers.
Since we tend to follow people who are similar to us, we often see our own views reflected back— A group of computer scientists have discovered that the opposite may also be true.
Can Twitter be part of the solution, not merely part of the problem?
In a study to be presented at a conference in July, a team of researchers from the U.K.'s University of Cambridge, Korea's Graduate School of cultural Technology-KAIST, and Germany's Max Planck Institute for Software Systems show how Twitter can provide users greater access to more varied political viewpoints and media sources than they might otherwise get.The paper, called "The Media Landscape in Twitter," explains how the team made surprising discoveries when they looked into the site's usage patterns. First they looked at who follows whom and discovered that Twitter is a highly politicized space. Then they examined patterns of tweeting and retweeting to try to understand how people receive information on Twitter—and what they might see. Their conclusion: Although Twitter is a pretty partisan space, it can offer unprecedented opportunities to break down the barriers that plague local, national, and international politics.Through retweets and interaction—what the authors call "indirect media exposure." As they put it, this "expands the political diversity of news to which users are exposed to a surprising extent, increasing the range by between 60 percent and 98 percent. Just over half (50.8 percent) of all Twitter users studied showed a distinct political bias in the media outlets and individuals they followed. Here are a couple of caveats about reading too much into the sharp divide the authors found. Given that Twitter's user base is younger and more metropolitan than the societal norm, it's not surprising that it's weighted to the left.
Twitter has secondary and tertiary benefits. Most organizations comprehend Twitter in simple terms: More followers means more exposure. But the study shows that it's not just about those you follow, but those your followers follow—essentially the people in your extended network. The network offers a number of routes for information from fresh sources to get to you.

This issue is significant because it talks about a way we can come to learn about others ideas. We may not always comprehend to some, but at least we can hear ideas through Twitter. It not only matter what who you follow but who your followers follow. Through one idea being put out into Twitter millions of people can read it and will be able to think about. Unlike facebook or myspace, twitter is more of personal thoughts or “status updates”, its used to know and influence each other very quickly. With people updating their ideas every second many can be learned, and people soon become interested in something which connects to peace.