As Occupy Wall Street gains stream, the New York Federal Reserve Bank wants to know–for better or worse–how they are perceived. And they’re going to monitor social media to figure it out.

A vendor proposal request (or RFP) from the Fed, which describes a “Sentiment Analysis and Social Media Monitoring Solution,” surfaced on Scribd on September 25, and was quickly featured on gonzo finance blog Zero Hedge.

According to the document, the Fed is now evaluating bids for a social media analysis system that will mine data from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and web forums–beginning in December. In order to “handle crisis situations” and “track reach and spread of […] messages and press releases,” the project will also identify a number of what they call “key bloggers and influencers” to target with their outreach, and presumably monitoring, efforts.

A Federal Reserve Bank of New York spokesperson, Jack Gutt, told Fast Company:

“This is a new effort for the New York Fed that is under consideration at this time and I am therefore not able to provide any details. The reason for contemplating such an effort is to get a better sense of the relevant concerns and discussions that are taking place in the public domain in order to improve our communications and engagement with the public.”

Unfortunately for the Federal Reserve, they are facing a hostile climate in terms of public relations right now. Sluggish economic recovery efforts have increased public resentment of both the government and major investment houses. Big banks such as Bank of America drew ire for a decision to raise debit card fees, broadly. Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street movement–a kind of left-wing counterpoint to the Tea Party–is gaining large numbers of sympathizers with vociferous, if sometimes incoherent, anti-big business messages.

The Fed’s social media monitoring project appears to be large-scale. It shows the institution’s interest in much more than just the thoughts of a few financial bloggers and economists. In their RFP, they have requested that vendors offer a monitoring system that can handle international traffic and social media content in multiple languages–in other words, the Fed wants to monitor social media worldwide.