Data Mining for True Trends?

The Twitter Trends list may seem to be a simple measure of what's on the minds of people around the globe. Not so, says Tarleton Gillespie. He's an information science professor at Cornell, and author of the upcoming book, "The Politics of Platforms".

Gillespie told Anne Strainchamps that - as supporters of the Occupy movement discovered - the algorithm that generates Twitter's trends list is no simple equation.