Facebook data mining for political views

Politico ^ | 10/30/2014 | Hadas Gold

[leapfrog0202]

Facebook is mining its data of users' posts to find out how users feel about certain candidates or issues and sharing that data with ABC News and BuzzFeed for use in their 2016 reporting, the social-networking site will announce on Friday.

The data will be gathered from the posts of Facebook users in the United States 18 and older, classifying sentiments about a politician or issue as positive, negative or neutral. The data can also be broken down into sentiments by gender and location, making it possible to see how Facebook users in the key primary states of Iowa or New Hampshire feel about certain presidential candidates, or how women in Florida feel about same-sex marriage.

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BuzzFeed will focus on using the data around issues in ongoing stories, and will feature the data in their news app.

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Despite the Beltway reliance on social media sites like Twitter, a recent Pew study found that 48 percent of Americans get their political news from Facebook, compared to just 14 percent on YouTube or 9 percent on Twitter.

"We are always looking for new and interesting ways to tell stories and engage with viewers. 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.

[tbw2]

What is more interesting is that defense contractors have been working on the same thing for several years.
This article is simply an admission that social networks themselves are compiling this information - unless it is a cover for the feds doing the same compilation, such as determining who is pro and anti-Obama before using that information against them.

What is Rapid Information Overlay Technology or RIOT Software?
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/What-is-Rapid-Information-Overlay-Technology-or-RIOT-Software

[a fool in paradise]

Despite the Beltway reliance on social media sites like Twitter, a recent Pew study found that 48 percent of Americans get their political news from Facebook, compared to just 14 percent on YouTube or 9 percent on Twitter.

I call it Socialist Networking for a reason. A lot of low information voters getting inaccurate memes from liberal hate groups and spreading them as a viral cancer.

[rfreedom4u]

Same here. I’ve even “lost” a few “friends” with all my anti-Barry Soetoro stuff.

Even “lost” a few because of my anti-homosexual stuff.