Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Summary of Findings The public continued to closely track news about health care reform last week, while the media divided its attention across a range of foreign and domestic stories. A third (33%) of the public says they followed the debate over health care reform more closely than other top stories last week, while 22% […]
On Monday, July 20, over dinner with legislators at his mansion, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley revealed how he proposed to cut nearly $300 million from the state budget. The next day, O’Malley provided details to the press, and on Thursday invited the public to make comments and suggestions about the cuts on a new website. […]
Summary of Findings The first week of fall brought little change to the public’s news agenda with the debate over health care reform continuing to top public interest. However, the news media play much less of a role in shaping views of health care reform and the economy – where personal experiences are an important […]
During a Christmas week when the Senate passed its version of health care reform, social media devoted more attention to the subject than it had at any time this year. Bloggers also focused on an international grassroots campaign. On Twitter, a Blackberry outage led the way, while on YouTube, questions about the attack on the Italian Prime Minister drew significant attention.
The economy and health care continued to lead the news last week as they have so often in recent months. But global warming, thanks in part to a controversy over emails, received a record level of coverage.
The U.S. unemployment rate jumped, the Afghan runoff election was cancelled and the House of Representatives passed a health care bill last week. But those stories all took a back seat to coverage of the killing spree at Fort Hood Texas, which quickly became a story about Islam and possibly, terrorism.
Last week, bloggers gave more attention to the subject of global warming than at any time this year. And while skeptics continued to focus on “Climate-gate,” defenders were more vocal than in previous weeks. On Twitter, the growing Tiger Woods scandal earned the most attention. And on YouTube, a feisty exchange between the White House press secretary and a reporter was the most viewed news video.