Social Media Analysis Tool (SMAT) is a free and open-source tool to track fake news online. The trending information on social media has consequential effects in the real world. Due to the current business model of most of the social platforms, fake news and disinformation can easily get trending these days and it’s ger hard to know the ingenuity of information.
Mozilla co-created this tool with Emmi Bevensee for the public to inspect the social trends media for disinformation. You can search a keyword on this tool to track the disinformation around that among social media platforms. Currently, it covers Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, and 8chan with insightful support for other platforms on the way including Telegram, Gab, Parler. etc. It helps you track timeline, hashtags, links, and activity around specific keywords in an interactive UX interface. You can export all the results via CSV file and download the graphics as PNG files.
Also read: Identify Deepfake Content using Assembler A Tool by Google
Track Fake News with Mozilla SMAT
Social Media Analysis Tool offers four functions to track the misinformation spreading on social platforms. You can just visit the website and use the tool right away. There is no need for any type of account or anything. Here are the four functions that you can use to track fake news based on a keyword:
Timeline Function
The Timeline Function plots a time graph on how many times a keyword is used on a social website. All you have to do is enter your keyword, set a date range, and pick the social website on which you want to track. You can filter out the use by hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly intervals. The graph shows you the number of posts containing that keyword and then generate a table of keyword use as per the selected interval.
Hashtags
The Hashtags Function shows you a bar graph of hashtags occurring with your searched keyword. Similar to Timeline Function, you can track the hashtags for a specific date range, platform, and limit how many hashtags you want to see.
Link Counter
The Link Counter Function shows you a bar graph of the links that people are providing along with the searched keyword. Similar to the Hashtags Function, you can limit the number of links for the graph and filter out the count for a specific date range and platform.
Activity
Lastly, the Activity Function shows you a bar graph of subreddits or authors who have the most activity for the searched keyword. Here also, you can filter out the tracks for date and platform and choose whether you want to track authors or subreddits.
Wrap Up
SMAT is a very useful tool in today’s world where misinformation is everywhere bringing chaos to the information system. With so many different sources and authors writing or claiming so many things, it gets hard to get to the truth. On top of that, there are influence campaigns with the intent of spread misinformation and polarizing or radicalizing the public. With SMAT anyone can interrogate online trends to track when it started, where it originated, and who is spreading it.
