Updating your Facebook status with your thoughts on the presidential election? Politico is paying close attention.

Starting Thursday and lasting through Jan. 21, Politico and Facebook will be gathering and analyzing all posts on the social media site about the Republican presidential candidates. Mashable appears to be the first site that reported the news from a Politico release.

The point of the partnership is to gauge the buzz around each candidate from Facebook users leading into the South Carolina primary.

Facebook’s team will actually do the gathering of data, but then they’ll pass it to Politico reporters who will write stories about it.

“Social media has forever changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency,” Big Brother Politico Editor in Chief John Harris said in a release issued by Politico. “Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the political dialogue among voters and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation.”