Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Abt SRBI Inc. among a national sample of 2,000 adults living in the continental United States, 18 years of age or older, from October 28-November 8, 2009 (1500 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 500 were interviewed on a […]
Social media responded strongly to the tragic earthquake that shattered Haiti last week. Beyond conveying information and first-hand accounts, Twitter became central in the effort to raise funds through text-messaging to help relief organizations. On YouTube, surveillance videos gained widespread attention.
Summary of Findings For the second week in a row, Americans followed news about the swine flu and its vaccine more closely than any other news story – with public interest outpacing the amount of national media coverage devoted to the story. About three-in-ten (29%) name reports about the fast-spreading flu and its vaccine as […]
A vote in Switzerland to ban the construction of Muslim minarets and controversies over global warming research led conversations in the blogosphere last week. On Twitter, it was a story about a local billboard campaign with unintended consequences. And on YouTube, a pop singer made her second appearance in recent weeks.
The next most prominent Hispanic-related storyline, at 15% of the newshole, was the drug war in Mexico, which was at the height of its intensity in February. Much of the attention to the drug war was tied to specific events along the U.S.-Mexico border. The story filled just 1% of the total newshole during the […]
Europeans and Americans share concerns about Iran’s emergent nuclear capabilities, though Russians are less worried.
Less than half of the public says the earth is warming as a result of human activity, but a majority knows which gas scientists say is to blame for global warming.
When President Barack Obama announced on July 8, 2009, that he would nominate renowned geneticist Francis Collins to be the new director of the National Institutes of Health, a number of scientists and pundits publicly questioned whether the nominee’s devout religious faith should disqualify him from the position. In particular, some worried that an outspoken […]