A new approach to social media called “Tweak the Tweet,” conceived by CU-Boulder graduate student Kate Starbird and deployed by members of CU’s Project EPIC research group and colleagues around the nation, helped Haiti relief efforts by providing standardized syntax for Twitter communications.
Through consistent use of specially placed keywords, or “hashtags,” in Twitter posts to communicate critical information such as location, status, and road conditions, the “Tweak the Tweet” approach made information computationally easier to extract and collate.
