The government wants to study ‘social pollution’ on Twitter

[TJ in Oregon]

Why should taxpayer money go to this at all? Why can't academia study this? So the government has a "public purpose" in researching bigotry online. What is the point? What are they going to do about it? Outside of making terroristic threats (already illegal and frequently prosecuted) what are they constitutionally able to do? Are they going to target every asshat who makes a racist youtube comment with this information?

Where do you think most of the money in academia comes from? The government gives research grants to groups at universities to study things. Occasionally private companies give said grants, but it's usually the federal government.

[TJ in Oregon]

Why should taxpayer money go to this at all? Why can't academia study this? So the government has a "public purpose" in researching bigotry online. What is the point? What are they going to do about it? Outside of making terroristic threats (already illegal and frequently prosecuted) what are they constitutionally able to do? Are they going to target every asshat who makes a racist youtube comment with this information?

Where do you think most of the money in academia comes from? The government gives research grants to groups at universities to study things. Occasionally private companies give said grants, but it's usually the federal government.

Granted that a large amount of funding goes to the higher education system, but once basic administrative costs are covered I don't think a large amount actually reaches research. IIRC, the research deficit is covered by grants from wealthy individuals, foundations, etc.

Most of the research grants are from the federal government rather than wealthy individuals or non-governmental foundations. Mine is, for example

Research grants from wealthy individuals for a project are pretty rare. Other than the government the next most common funding source is industry.

[TJ in Oregon]

My final word in this thread is that Twitter is a transparent website where personal data is accessible. Commissioning an academic study of Twitter data points is not remotely comparable to NSA screening phone calls and tapping into people's private information or 1984 or fascism. Every day our data on Facebook and Twitter is mined for corporations and you expect me to be concerned by an academic study on civic involvement? Clearly, I should privilege the revenue stream of Twitter and the corporate earnings of Walmart over the insights of academia!

Hell may have frozen over, but I agree with you DFB. If this were a marketing department of a media corporation funding the study no one would bat an eye despite the fact that it would make no difference at all in how it's carried out.