If you are a Twitter user, you have been contributing to CNN's reporting for the past few months whether you want to or not.
The news media outlet announced on Wednesday that it had partnered with analytics firm Dataminr and Twitter to develop a tool that alerts journalists to breaking stories and trends. CNN has been using the program under and exclusive agreement, and said at an event that the program had helped alert its reporters to various stories including explosions in Al-Mansour, Iraq and reports that Justin Bieber had been arrested.
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Dataminr scans Twitter for patterns based on a variety of factors including language and location, which are then put through algorithms to select important events and present them to journalists as alerts. The company previously specialized in providing financial analysis of sentiment on Twitter. It rose to prominence by detecting the impending announcement of Osama bin Laden's death before the major news outlets.
CNN president Jeff Zucker lauded the partnership as "a really improtant tool and resource as we continue to gather news," in comments at Wednesday's event. "There have been many examples already of how we've used Dataminr."
The program that Dataminr honed with CNN was billed by Dataminr founder and CEO Ted Bailey as a tool to "alert journalists to information that is emerging on Twitter in real time." Twitter also announced the news in a blog post.
Journalists can also hone the program with keywords and locations to specialize the alerts that are generated. While CNN currently has exclusive access to the tool, Dataminr will be available for all newsrooms later this year. Bailey declined to Dataminr's fee structure.
The partnership is not CNN's first venture into reporting that relies on social media and citizen journalism. iReport was launched in 2006, however those contributions are voluntary, while tweets have become a common part of CNN's on-air coverage. Any Tweet may end being used by Dataminr, but it will still be up to CNN journalists whether to feature tweets in reporting.
Algorithms continue to find new uses in the automation of media. Amazon eliminated much of its editorial staff in the early 2000s after the company developed a system to personalize its product suggestions. Yahoo employs a program that generates customized stories about users' fantasy football matchups.
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