Technology topped the agenda on Twitter last week as the powerful tech troika of Twitter, Google and Facebook all generated attention. On blogs, the focus was divided between events relating to the Afghanistan war and the death of a veteran actor. And a YouTube-based host who creates his own brand of news was popular once again.
No other event or story generated much attention as the battle for Congress was finally resolved, accounting for more than half of last week’s coverage. Once the voters had spoken, the media pivoted from polls and predictions to post-mortems and projections about the new political landscape. And not surprisingly, President Obama was at the center of the narrative.
Attention to the crucial midterm congressional elections reached new heights last week, accounting for nearly half the overall news coverage. The top stories also included the economy, a new terror plot, the conflict in Afghanistan and fresh revelations about the BP oil disaster that dominated coverage in the summer.
A backlash against columnist David Broder’s suggestions for Obama united bloggers last week while and Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear got mixed reviews.
Looking at the people who generated the most coverage over the course of the oil spill story, one thing is apparent. Protagonists, or heroes in the narrative, were few and far between—certainly none in BP and really, none in the government either. Even though the role of BP got more coverage overall than the role […]
Not all Americans are looking for the same things when they turn to the news. With the wide array of news sources now available, the regular audiences for various news outlets offer differing top reasons why those sources appeal to them. Regular CNN viewers, for example, overwhelmingly say they turn to CNN for the latest […]
A pastor’s plan to commemorate the Sept. 11 terror attacks by burning the Islamic holy book, and an imam’s desire to build a community center near the site of one of those attacks, generated significant media attention during a week of 9/11 remembrances.
Overview There are many more ways to get the news these days, and as a consequence Americans are spending more time with the news than over much of the past decade. Digital platforms are playing a larger role in news consumption, and they seem to be more than making up for modest declines in the […]
