Alongside public affairs strategist Mark Blevis, The Canadian Press will use Sysomos software to search out political discussions and mentions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums.

Blevis, who runs consulting firm Full Duplex, said that the social media monitoring method could deliver stronger information than a traditional focus group: “Here, with the right tools, you have a larger group of people, you have a larger pool of content to evaluate and instead of asking about specific issues you are going to get information potentially about all the issues.”