POLITICIANS know that quotes can take on a life of their own. Now a method for tracking utterances as they cycle through online media has been developed by a group of computer scientists.
It turns out that bloggers are rarely the first to publish a catchy quote, but instead lag behind traditional news media such as newspapers, with a typical quote being picked up by bloggers an average of 2.5 hours later.
Diffusion in the opposite direction is rare: just 3.5 per cent of quotes originated from blogs.
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of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and colleagues, developed an algorithm that groups blog posts and news stories that mention the same quote, even when it appears in slightly different forms. They applied the algorithm to 90 million articles published in the three months leading up to the US presidential election last year.
Barack Obama鈥檚 鈥渓ipstick on a pig鈥� comment attracted the most attention. Other high-ranking quotes include Palin鈥檚 statement that 鈥渢rade missions鈥� between Russia and her home state, Alaska, constituted foreign-policy experience. The researchers will present in June at the conference in Paris.
