In a year of attention-grabbing election surprises, nothing generated as much media interest as Delaware’s GOP Senate race last week. The troubled economy attracted significant coverage as well, but this time the focus was on tax cuts rather than employment figures. And education issues made a rare appearance on the list of PEJ’s top-five stories last week.
Election-year politics and a noteworthy poll made up the hottest story in the blogosphere last week. Meanwhile on Twitter, a technology topic involving oft-scrutinized Apple topped the news agenda. And on YouTube, the most popular subject by far was Paul the octopus, the world-class World Cup handicapper.
The Pew Forum’s Alan Cooperman and Greg Smith, along with Boston University professor and author Stephen Prothero and Krista Tippett of American Public Media, explore key findings from a new Pew Forum survey on how much Americans know about religion as part of a panel discussion at a national symposium on religious literacy in Washington, […]
The argument over the Park 51 Islamic center continued in the blogosphere last week, but this time, mosque supporters dominated. Bloggers also reacted to a poll that more Americans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. On Twitter, an article declaring "The Web is dead" was No. 1. And on YouTube, an obscene gesture drove a popular video.
In a week in which economic news nearly hit a three-month high, cable talk shows were dominated by the resignation of a federal employee whose comments on race were taken out of context by a conservative website. Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico, the debate was about the merits of plugging the BP oil well with a “topkill” or a “bottom kill.”
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.
The Democratic Party made a concerted effort to court religious voters in the 2008 presidential election that pitted Democrat Barack Obama against Republican John McCain.1 Led by Obama himself and aided by progressive religious activists, the Democrats reached out to numerous religious groups in hopes of narrowing the “God gap,” a media catchphrase for a […]