The world’s largest social network has closed a deal to provide aggregated data about Americans’ political views to website Buzzfeed and ABC News, for their coverage of all US elections up to and including the presidential vote in 2016
Facebook will automatically monitor the political expression of all of its adult US users – from what they put down on their form, to what news articles they ‘like’ or how they vote in online polls, and even who they mention in their posts – and then match the information up with the users’ age, gender and location, to get insight into the minds of millions of potential voters.
More than a third of all Americans log onto Facebook at least once a day.
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“Given the volume of conversation around politics on Facebook, we believe this data truly represents what the American people think about the potential candidates. We’re excited to partner with ABC News and BuzzFeed News, who will both bring their unique journalistic perspective to this data,” said a statement from Andy Mitchell, Facebook’s Director of News and Global Media Partnerships.
ABC News will start using the data from Facebook as soon as next week as part of their 2014 Election Day coverage. It will also focus on possible 2016 presidential candidates.
“This rich trove of data will allow us to do just that — helping us identify the most important trends and the most stimulating conversations happening around the 2016 election cycle,” ABC news president James Goldston said in a statement, as quoted by Politico magazine.
Read the Full Article: Source – Russia Today
http://rt.com/usa/201335-facebook-buzzfeed-abc-elections/
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