CNN President Cautiously Embraces Social Media

Thanks to a recent partnership with Facebook, CNN can track which topics are trending on the social network at a given time. But CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker said on Tuesday that he doesn't want his network to lean too heavily on that social chatter when making news judgments.

"We can't be strictly driven by what people are talking about on social," Zucker said at Adweek's Brand Genius Think Tank event, in partnership with Time Warner.

But the social data help CNN understand the state of conversations about the news. For instance, Zucker revealed that in the last 24 hours Obamacare and Kenya have received about the same number of Facebook mentions.

And increasingly, social media plays a key role in newsgathering, Zucker continued, pointing to the militant group al-Shabab claiming responsibility on Twitter for the mall attack over the weekend in Kenya. read more http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/cnn-president-cautiously-embraces-social-media-152694?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=AWK_TodayTech&utm_campaign=Adweek%20Newsletter%20Template%20-%20July%2012%20-%20Tech%20Today