Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The protests in Iran consumed blogs and social media last week. Web users disseminated information, organized and demonstrated solidarity with protestors. In addition to tracking the blogosphere, this week’s New Media Index takes a look at Twitter and the explosion of tweets about Iran.
As attention to the economy dropped, the nation’s anti-terrorism policies dominated the news agenda for the second time in the past month. Since the release of the interrogation memos, coverage of this topic has jumped dramatically.
The intensifying protests and political ferment inside Iran eclipsed some major domestic stories in the U.S. news agenda last week. And as the mainstream press confronted daunting restrictions on coverage, an outpouring of social media reports—but not all from Twitter—helped drive the Iran narrative.
In the last several weeks, terrorism has topped the news agenda more often than the economic crisis. As last week’s dueling Cheney-Obama speeches showed, that’s what happens when a hot-button topic becomes the Beltway’s primary political fault line.
A financial report card for U.S. banks returned the economic crisis to the top of the news agenda last week while the fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan also became a major story.
The online community was focused on two subjects that received little attention in the mainstream press last week—the debate over gay marriage and the death of a man at the G20 Summit.
This report is a special segment of A Year in the News, an analysis of the mainstream media in 2008 conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. This segment of the analysis was written in collaboration with the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The biggest single religion […]
Coverage of the financial meltdown dropped to its lowest level in months last week as Somali pirates, a trip to Turkey, a deadly earthquake and a defiant missile launch dominated the news agenda. Is it a trend or an anomaly?
The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, established by President Barack Obama, plans to expand partnerships between the government and faith-based and community organizations for the delivery of social services. What lessons can be learned from the preceding eight years of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President George […]
Bloggers last week focused on reports and predictions involving major changes to some of the country’s prominent institutions. And their verdict was mixed on whether these potentially dramatic developments were heartening or ominous.