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Facebook data mining for political views

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.

"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,” Andy Mitchell, Facebook’s director of news and global media pPartnerships, said in a statement.

A Facebook spokesperson said the data "is gathered in an aggregated and depersonalized manner in a privacy safe way."

ABC News will start using the data next week as part of their 2014 Election Day coverage, and will focus on possible 2016 presidential candidates. BuzzFeed will focus on using the data around issues in ongoing stories, and will feature the data in their news app.

"Facebook is going to be a central -- maybe the central -- arena in which political conversation happens in 2016. We're thrilled to have a glimpse at what America is thinking, and excited to share it broadly with our readers,” BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith said in a statement.

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.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.