This is why a project supported by the European Union and involving five universities – Sheffield, Warwick, King’s College London, Saarland in Germany and MODUL University Vienna in Austria – is developing a ‘lie detector’ for checking social media. The three-year project is named after the mythological Greek Goddess of rumour – ‘Pheme’. Lead researcher Dr Kalina Bontcheva, from the Department of Computer Science in the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Engineering, explains that the work began back in 2011 and 2012, looking at rumours circulating in the London riots.