How are Booleans used in Media Monitoring?

Boolean: it may be a word you’ve never heard of before or perhaps it’s one you know but don’t truly understand. Boolean is a computer science term, it is a data type with two possible values: true or false. It is named after the English mathematician and logician George Boole, whose algebraic and logical systems are used in all modern digital computers.

What does this have to do with media monitoring? Well, booleans act like little on and off switches, helping us to filter the avalanche of information flowing through our databases. Before computers we used humans to search out relevant content for our clients, now MyMedia uses a combination of computer science and humans (we still like employing humans to approve what the computer has found though).

Traditionally clients handed over a list of keywords that enabled MyMedia to find relevant content for a brief but with a new addition to our Newsroom platform it’s time to bring booleans out of the darkness and into the light. As a MyMedia client you can now create personal tags that enable you to track important stories, events and issues independent of the main coverage brief, they’re easy to set up and quick to change. For more information on how to utilise this aspect simply email team@my-media.com.au

The better your boolean operators, the better the search results, so here’s our basic boolean cheat sheet that you can refer to when creating personal tags in Newsroom.