Ad-busting apps help voters see through political noise

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

With the US election season heating up, the airwaves are once again saturated with political advertisements. But as both President Barack Obama, challenger Mitt Romney, and their many supporting organisations wage war through television and radio spots, voters are now being given tools to sift through all the noise: smartphone apps that tell listeners all about the groups behind the adverts.

Technology is playing a much more pivotal role in presidential politics in 2012 than four years ago. Seizing on the rise of the smartphone, the non-profit group Sunlight Foundation, which works to increase government openness, has built an app called Ad Hawk that uses a phone's microphone to listen to campaign ads and identify them. It then looks up the ad in a database maintained by the foundation, and returns information like which group sponsored the ad, where it's airing, and any relevant media reports about the sponsors.

The experience is sort of like the music-matching app Shazam, but for political ads. Ad Hawk is powered by the Echoprint algorithm, a piece of open source software built by music analysis firm The Echo Nest that is normally used to create digital "fingerprints" of popular songs.

When recently tested in New Scientist's Boston bureau, the app was pointed at a Mitt Romney ad called "Silence", which criticises Obama's economic policy. Ad Hawk correctly identified the spot, adding that it was sponsored by Romney for President, Inc. - in effect, the Romney campaign.

Another advert, titled "Debate", was correctly identified as sponsored by the Restore our Future super PAC. The app also reveals how much money the group has received ($89 million) in this election cycle, and how positive or negative its messages are. Restore our Future's ads have only supported republican candidates.

The release of Ad Hawk follows the release of a similar app, called Super PAC app for revealing the funding sources of political campaigns. Super PAC app is only available for Apple iOS (Ad Hawk is available for both iOS and Android), and uses an audio fingerprinting method from Tunesat - a company which helps rights holders find out where their music is being played, allowing them to track down copyright violations.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/22ca1e3d/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C0A80Cad0Ebusting0Eapps0Ehelp0Evoters0Ese0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

the host hoodie hoosiers temperance world bank kim kardashian flour bomb hunger games box office