As the presidential election enters the last lap, where are people going to learn about the campaign and the candidates? A new PEJ survey finds an increasingly diverse ecosystem for political news.
Perhaps no topic in technology attracted more attention in 2011 than the rise of social media and its potential impact on news. “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next,” we wrote in a May 2011 report analyzing online news behavior called Navigating News Online.
With Facebook’s IPO filing, this special edition of the New Media Index examines the conversation about the company among bloggers and tweeters during the past three years.
The migration of audiences toward digital news advanced to a new level in 2011 and early 2012, the era of mobile and multidigital devices. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults own laptop or desktop computers, a number that has been stable for some years.1 Now, in addition, 44% of adults own a smartphone, and the number of tablet owners grew by about 50% since the summer of 2011, to 18% of Americans over age 18.
What stories and which people generated the most news coverage in 2011? PEJ’s annual Year in the News report offers answers. The Year in News 2011 Interactive allows users to explore the data for themselves.
Criticism of a 2012 GOP presidential candidate dominated the conversation on blogs last week, while Twitter users got excited over a new social networking tool from Google. On YouTube, strange objects in the air over London generated the most views.
An overwhelming majority of Americans get their news from multiple news platforms. Which media sectors do people in the U.S rely on most? How has the internet and mobile technology changed the way people consume news? A joint PEJ-Pew Internet survey examines how internet and cell phone users have transformed news into a social experience.
Bloggers and social media were consumed with two events in the last week that triggered an online debate about political extremism—one in Europe and one in Washington D.C. And the most-viewed news video on YouTube was the start of a feud between David Letterman and Sarah Palin.
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