The ultimate decision about who should be the Person of the Year is made by TIME’s editors, but every year the reader poll is an important window into who you think most shaped 2016.
This is your chance to cast your vote: Who do you think influenced the news the most this year, for better or for worse?
For 2016, TIME—in partnership with Opentopic and IBM’s Watson—is also able to track and compare influence in a whole new way. Opentopic worked with Watson to track how candidates made their mark on the Internet, in order to create a picture of what the world is saying about the people and ideas that matter. As part of this collaboration with Fortune and TIME, Opentopic has evaluated more than 62 million documents from nearly 3.5 million online sources. Watson’s deep-learning technology then classifies and sorts that information. TIME’s editors used this information while finalizing the list for the Person of the Year reader poll—and, as Watson updates that analysis throughout the polling period, this technology can deepen our understanding of what it really means to be one of the most influential people in the world.
Voting on the reader’s choice poll ends Dec. 4, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
TIME’s Person of the Year will be revealed on Dec. 7.
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