A Black Mark for Black Friday Sparks the Blogosphere
An incident involving a woman attacking fellow shoppers with pepper spray during a Black Friday sale got the attention of bloggers last week.
A November 2011 Pew Forum report gave a brief history of organized religious advocacy in Washington, D.C., and examined the major characteristics of religion-related advocacy. The Pew Forum hosted an event to discuss the report’s key findings with journalists, policymakers and representatives from organizations that advocate on religion-related issues in Washington.
The Shirley Sherrod saga started with a video posted online and ended with a flurry of finger pointing. In a special report, PEJ reconstructs a chronology of how the story reverberated around the media echo chamber before dramatically changing course. And this week’s News Coverage Index finds that the tale of the USDA employee prematurely forced out of her job was the No. 2 story in the news agenda.
The blogosphere resembled one of those old CNN Crossfire shows last week as liberals and conservatives frequently faced off on such issues as federal assistance programs, charges of bigotry and opposition to President Obama.
The debate over the Islamic Center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York was a hotly contested issue for bloggers for the third week in a row as the focus turned to the motives of those opposing the construction. On Twitter, a new phone app feature from Google created a mostly positive buzz.
George Mason University Professor Peter Mandaville, Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation, and Maha Azzam of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House discussed key findings of a Pew Forum study containing profiles of some of the oldest, largest and most influential Muslim groups – from the Muslim Brotherhood to mystical Sufi orders and networks of religious scholars.
Bloggers last week returned to two issues that generated interest in recent weeks. For the second time in a month, Afghanistan led the news in the blogosphere. And musician Dave Matthews sparked a second round of heated online debate with some comments about racism. On Twitter, for this week at least, the focus moved beyond Twitter itself.
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