Given that there are elections forthcoming in both Canada and the United States, a new social bookmarking tool called SpinSpotter may prove useful. Using a browser plugin called “Spinoculars”, users can mark spin and comment on why they think that the identified material is biased. You can also edit the comments of others, just like in a wiki.
There is a drop-down box that allows you to identify the type of spin you are dealing with. Types of spin include:
“Reporter’s Voice (the reporter is writing to convey meaning beyond supported evidence),
Passive Voice (the subject of the sentence isn’t the person performing the action; not identifying who did it!),
Biased Source (the reporter doesn’t disclose their view or affiliations or those of their source),
Disregarded Context (the reporter leaves out parts of an event without giving equal weight to the full aspect of what happened),
Selective Disclosure (the reporter fails to mention a critical element of the story),
Lack of Balance (the reporter fails to give equal voice to both sides, or all sides, of a controversial story),
Over-Reliance on Press Releases (the reporter reprints a press release as if it were a news story).”
There is a video of how this all works.
It might turn out that everything that we read is biased, but it is an interesting experiment. (GW)
SpinSpotter, a New Browser Plugin to Help Spot Media Bias | REadWriteWeb | Sarah Perez | 9 September 2008
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