Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Contrary to the mainstream media focus on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings last week, social media reflected a very different news agenda. On blogs, Sarah Palin’s political future and views on energy policy dominated. On Twitter, Iran led the conversation for a fifth week in a row. And on YouTube, a controversy over a photo of President Obama was resolved.
In a week that exposed dramatically different news agendas between social and mainstream media, online commentators shifted away from the King of Pop to focus on a 30-year-old technological breakthrough and the death of an offbeat TV celebrity. The most viewed YouTube video captured an impromptu cell phone snafu.
A diverse mix of stories—from war policy to a scientific breakthrough—topped the news agenda in the blogosphere last week. But the dominant topic was a heinous crime that generated much more attention online than in the traditional press. On Twitter, the top subject was a very different kind of crime story.
Bloggers and social media balanced their attention last week among a wide array of subjects that differed dramatically from top stories in the mainstream media.
Various studies have shown that as individuals are lifted out of poverty, concern about issues outside of day-to-day survival – such as environmental protection – increase. The 2007 Pew Global Attitudes survey found that, in several countries, the middle class reported greater concern about global warming and was more likely to identify pollution as a […]
Bloggers and social media eschewed the economic crisis and European summitry last week to focus on a group of diverse topics ranging from journalism to political activism to environmentalism. Meanwhile the week’s most viewed YouTube video featured a trick shot from a basketball superstar.
The economic crisis again dominated blogs and social media last week, as the conversation expanded from AIG to several different elements of the financial meltdown. And the most viewed video was an overseas variation on the same theme.