ILLINOIS VOTERS DIG DEEP ON CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES WITH DATA MINED BY THE KNIGHT NEWS LAB

EVANSTON, Ill., March 7, 2012 -- Illinois voters have more insight into congressional candidates this year thanks to a new tool that mines social networks and other data sources for candidate information. The tool, called Congressional Primaries 2012, culls data from Twitter and Facebook, news stories and the Federal Election Commission to compile profiles of candidates seeking a congressional office in Illinois. The technology was developed at the Knight News Innovation Lab at Northwestern University and has been deployed at CongressionalPrimaries.org and on select media partner sites