Twitter Invests $10 Million in MIT’s Media Lab to Better Understand Online Communication

Twitter is investing $10 million in MIT’s Media Lab — and providing access to its entire Twitter stream and tweet archive — in pursuit of a better understanding of how people are communicating and sharing online. The investment will help fund the Laboratory for Social Machines, according to MIT, a new organization that will build “collaborative tools and mobile apps” to support and study public communication. The organization, which will include MIT students, will operate independently of Twitter, although Twitter’s chief media scientist, Deb Roy, will lead the LSM (he’s also a professor at MIT).

It’s unclear whether Twitter will have any ownership over products or findings that result from the LSM, although MIT’s characterization of Twitter’s involvement as an “investment” seems to imply that it will. A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to Re/code’s request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.