1. A system, comprising: a citation search and analytics engine that includes a processor, which in operation, retrieves from a social network a plurality of content items composed by a plurality of subjects citing a plurality of objects that fit searching criteria specified by a user; and an object selection engine that includes a processor, which in operation, receives a user-provided query with selection criteria including a separate media-affiliation status preference, identifies media affiliation status of the plurality of subjects of the plurality of content items meeting the query selection criteria, uses a whitelist and a trained probabilistic media type classifier either separately or in combination to assign a subject to each of the content items either as a media type or non-media type author, wherein the object selection derives the whitelist from a public list of social media sources and their respective verified accounts, which classify the users/owners of those accounts as either media type or non-media type authors engine, utilizes the media affiliation status of the plurality of subjects as a preference to select at least one of the plurality of content items or the cited objects such that those items/objects for which the plurality of subjects media affiliation status matches the user-provided media affiliation status preference, wherein the media affiliation status for one of the plurality of subjects is whether that subject is associated with a commercial news source, provides this selection in an un-ranked search result, computes and provides aggregated metrics based on this selection, and ranks the selected content items or cited object higher than other content items/cited objects in a ranked search result, based on whether the corresponding subject for the selected content items or cited object is associated with media affiliation status preference, wherein one of the selected content items or cited objects that is associated with the corresponding subject matching the media affiliation status preference is ranked higher than another one of the content items or cited objects associated with the corresponding subject not matching the media affiliation status preference.