It was Sarah Palin and her controversial “One Nation” bus tour
that led bloggers back to politics.
For the week of May 30-June 3, 12% of the news links on
blogs were about the potential candidate’s actions, making Palin the No. 1
subject, according to the New
Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in
Journalism. This is the first time in two months that politics led the
discussion on blogs.
The last time was in early March
when the crop of potential Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential
campaign was the most linked-to subject. Other hot political topics in recent
weeks such as the presence of Donald Trump’s potential candidacy, the release
of President Obama’s original birth certificate, and even the negotiations that
nearly resulted in a federal government shutdown were not enough to turn the
blogosphere’s attention to politics.
At 12%, the story was not an overwhelming portion of the
conversation when compared to the portion garnered by other top stories, such
as the breakup of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger three
weeks ago(41%) or the death of
Elizabeth Taylor in March
(33%). But it drew bloggers in and was
large enough to top all other subjects last week.
Two specific Palin-related events drew attention from
bloggers. The first was the May
29 kickoff at the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally in Washington, D.C., and
the second was the June 2 visit
to New Hampshire which coincided with Mitt Romney’s formal announcement that he
was running for president.
The tone of the conversation regarding Palin was split,
although not along traditional ideological lines. Liberal bloggers were
critical and thought that her attention-getting tour was harmful for the Republican
Party. Conservatives, however, were divided. Some agreed with liberals—at least
in seeing Palin as an obstacle to success in finding a GOP nominee who could
beat Obama in 2012. But others expressed support for her—seeing her as a
popular, grassroots figure whose actions are creating needed energy in the
party.
And while some conservative bloggers offered their take on whether
Palin would decide to run or not, very few expressed confidence in their
predictions.
Another political issue also made it among the most-linked
to stories last week: the tense White Housemeeting
between President Obama and House Republicans about the federal
debt ceiling. The story was the fourth largest subject at 8%. According to the LA
Times, “the two sides traded complaints, accusing each other of partisanship
and posturing” rather than making progress toward an agreement.
Most of the bloggers who discussed the meeting were liberal
and focused on two aspects. One was a disarming quote from Obama and the other
was the potentially dangerous consequences to the economy if an agreement to
raise the debt ceiling is not reached.
Palin’s Bus Tour
As Palin journeyed on her unconventional bus tour that may
or may not be the beginning of a presidential campaign, many online noted how
Palin did not need to follow the traditional steps most candidates take.
“Sarah Palin appears to be on a mission to do it
differently,” wrote Matt Hames at People
Like to Share. “Instead of using the press to get out her message, she is
getting out her message with Facebook and Twitter…Love her or not, this is
going to be interesting to watch.”
“Sarah Palin joined the ROLLING THUNDER ride today in
Washington DC,” posted Jim Hoft at Gateway
Pundit along with pictures and video of Palin’s interactions at the rally.
“It looks like she was a hit.”*
“Obama could never ever go to a rally like that and he knows
it,” added NeoKong on the same
web page.
“I see all this as more of Palin's sickness that requires
her to be the center of attention, even if it's at the expense of the
Veterans,” wrote an anonymous commenter on Right
Speak. “This was nothing more than a photo-op. She is no more a biker than
I am a writer.”
While Palin claimed her arrival in New
Hampshire the same day of Mitt Romney’s official campaign kick-off was pure
coincidence, bloggers universally agreed that she knew what she was doing—and
that it was harmful to Romney.
“Of course Palin claims that her being in New Hampshire at
the same time Mitt is making his announcement is strictly coincidental.
Nonsense,” declared Right
Wing Thinking. “Palin is very politically shrewd and is hyper aware of the
wattage her megaphone carries…The…reason might be that Palin (like many TEA
Partiers) thinks Romney is an awful candidate and sinking him now would insure
a true conservative prevails in 2012.”
“If I were Mitt Romney and I had let everyone
know that I was going to announce that I was running for president in a speech
in New Hampshire, I would despise Sarah Palin for this,” admitted Brobrubel’s
Blog. “And then the Thrilla from Wasilla brings her buscapade to the state
and blows him away. Don’t think for a minute that she didn’t know what she was
doing.”
As evidence, a number of bloggers pointed to the front page
of the state’s largest newspaper the following day.
“Friday's front page of the New Hampshire Union Leader…has
Romney's launch seriously overshadowed by two other events: The death of former
Gov. Walter Peterson (R) -- and Sarah Palin's tour of the state. The latter was
given the banner headline just above the fold, ‘Palin Hits The Seacoast,’ plus
a large photo of Palin and her daughter Piper,” pointed out Eric Kleefeld at Talking
Points Memo. “By comparison, Romney's kickoff was reduced to a mere inset
photo within text of the Palin piece, and a small headline, ‘Romney
Announces.’”
Liberals offered unabashed criticism of Palin’s actions,
though some also noted the potential advantage they felt it could bring to the
Democratic Party.
“Those of us opposed to Palin may realize an additional
benefit of having her run in the primary. With a pit bull loose in the GOP
primary we may see attacks on every GOP candidate who runs against Sarah
Palin,” expressed Malia
Litman. “Even if Palin doesn’t ultimately win the GOP nomination, the
fatality of her bite may prove to be lethal to the Republican Party.”
“Don’t look now but we now know Sarah Palin’s role. She’s
the wingnut ombudsman from Tea Party country putting the Republican
establishment on notice,” suggested Taylor
Marsh, implying that Palin will not run. “From this perch she’ll throw pot
shots at presidential wannabes not keeping true to We the People…It’s from here
she’ll also amass her platform for Fox News channel as conscience of the new
conservatives.”
Conservatives were split on the impact of Palin’s tour.
“Her tour has not been furnishing an itinerary to the
press, yet her activities are top news at outlets left-wing, main-stream, and
right-of-center alike,” declared R. Mitchell at Conservative
Daily News. “With that kind of publicity and drawing power comes influence.
Electoral influence. The establishment candidates know that they will struggle
to take primaries in states where the Tea Parties are strong and
well-organized. Sarah turns those grass-roots messages into the news of the
day.”
“All this activity is timed to soak up the maximum amount of
media attention, exploiting the rumors of a potential Presidential run to
further raise Palin’s profile,” wrote Zazu at The
Constitution Club. “One thing is certain, regardless of her final decision,
she is helping Romney and Obama at the expense of her own conservative base.”
Those that chose to predict what Palin would decide usually
did so without much certainty.
“I still think Sarah Palin is not running,” suggested Erick
Erickson at RedState.
“All that said, as this bus tour rolls along, I think she is seeing if she can
affect an uptick in favorability ratings. If she can, I think she might change
her mind. Should Palin get in, she will be a game changer.”
Debt Ceiling Meeting
According to the Los
Angeles Times, the June 1 White House meeting between Obama and House
Republican leaders about the economy and the prospect of raising the country’s
debt ceiling left most of the issues unresolved. Rather than debate the issue,
though, many bloggers remarked on a specific quote from the session.
In responding to claims that Democrats were using
demagoguery to criticize GOP plans on Medicare, Obama responded that he himself
had been the subject of prejudicial attacks.
“I'm the death-panel-supporting, socialist,
may-not-have-been-born-here president,” Obama reportedly said.
Supporters of Obama loved the sentiment.
“Thank you LOL,” cheered Chipsticks at The Obama Diary
after reprinting the quote. “Jeez, I love this
man!”
“Not bad...please show backbone,” encouraged
Attaturk at Rising
Hegemon.
There were some bloggers who focused on the actual
legislative debate—mostly liberals who questioned the Republican position of no
debt ceiling raise unless accompanied by spending reductions.
“Suppose we had a Republican president and a Democratic
House. And suppose Democrats decided they would block any debt ceiling increase
unless the president agreed to a credible plan to slow greenhouse gas
emissions. Would you object to such a demand?” asked Jonathan Chait at The
New Republic. “The debt ceiling has nothing to do with any particular
policy choices -- it's just a routine vote that used to be an opportunity for
the minority party to embarrass the president, which Republicans are turning
into a hostage opportunity.”
“I can’t believe that we have a political party
[Republicans] that is so intent on damaging an administration that it’s going
to frighten the global economy into a possibly game changing reshuffling of
what the base of financial world’s ‘risk free’ rate and global safe haven
currency may be in the future,” explained dakinikat at Sky
Dancing.
The Rest of the Week
on Blogs
The other top stories on blogs last week included a health
warning, an investigation into the local government in Los Angeles, and an
effort to change sentences for some drug offenders.
The No. 2 story, at 9%, was a report
by the World Health Organization that cell phones are “possibly carcinogenic”
and dangerous to humans. This news was a departure for the organization which
had previously said there were no risks from such exposure. Bloggers were
alarmed by the news and many linked to a 2008 CNN.com
story that featured five tips to limit cell phone risk and exposure to
radiation.
The No. 3 story, at 9%, was about a confidential
memo sent to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that was
accidentally released to hundreds of other people. According to the memo,
written by General Manager Robert Ovrom, an FBI probe
into corruption at the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety has
expanded to look into wrongdoing by city supervisors—not just rank-and-file
inspectors. The investigation could have a lasting impact on the city’s
government.
A proposal
supported by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to correct disparities in
prison sentences between crack and powder cocaine offenders
was fifth at 7%. If the plan goes into effect, it could impact more than 12,000
federal prisoners.
Twitter
On the social networking site Twitter, social media
strategies for small businesses and international warnings about the
environment took the lead.
The top subject, with 16% of the links, dealt with how small
businesses use the location-based app called foursquare. Most of the attention
was to a Mashable
story listing the top five mistakes committed by small businesses using the
platform including giving away too much product via specials and not
advertising that their company is a Foursquare merchant.
Stories about global warming were second at 11%. Most of the
focus was about a report
by the International Energy Agency which stated that greenhouse
gas emissions increased by a record amount last year. Consequently, the hopes
of holding global warming to safe levels, according to the Agency, are all but
out of reach.
Warnings
by Oxfam, an international confederation of organizations fighting poverty,
that food prices could rise by more than 120% in the next 20 years due in part
to global warming, was the third story at 9%.
A survey
of Twitter users completed by the Twitter Q&A search service inboxQ
that showed that 64% of users were more likely to make a purchase from a
business that answered their questions on Twitter was the fourth story, also at
9%.
And a plan by Germany to
phase out all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022 was fifth at 7%. The
goal is to find renewable sources of energy to replace the power currently
coming from those plants.
YouTube
On YouTube, an economic crisis overseas drew the most
attention last week. The top two most-viewed news videos focused on the ongoing
financial problems occurring in Spain.
The No. 1 video shows violent clashes between the Catalan
regional police and protesters in Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya on May 27. Called
the “indignados” (the indignant), the protestors set up camp in the center of
the square to protest Spain’s financial crisis, the unemployment rate, and the
austerity measures imposed by the Spanish government. As the police tried to
evict the demonstrators in order to allow the city’s sanitary department to
have access to the square, police are seen hitting protestors with clubs.
The No. 2 video is a humorous Spanish animation by Aleix
Salo explaining the housing bubble market in Spain.
Most Viewed News & Politics Videos on YouTube For the Week of May 28-June 3, 2011
1. Clashes between Catalan regional police and
protesters in Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya
2. A Spanish-language animated cartoon explaining
the housing bubble in
Spain
3. Video of President Obama suffering
an embarrassing moment when he spoke over the British anthem during a dinner
with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on May 25
4. Footage of a brave
teacher trying to keep kindergarten children calm and safe during a May 27
shooting in La Estanzuela, Nuevo Leon Mexico
5. Footage filmed from a
helicopter by Australia’s Channel 7 showing a series of powerful waterspouts
near the New South Wales coastline
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading
commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares
those subjects to that of the mainstream press.
PEJ's New Media Index is a companion to its weekly News Coverage
Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating
today's news information narrative and in shaping the way Americans
interact with the news. The expansion of online blogs and other social
media sites has allowed news-consumers and others outside the mainstream
press to have more of a role in agenda setting, dissemination and
interpretation. PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news
the online sites focus on, and how that compared with the narrative in
the traditional press.
A prominent Web tracking site Icerocket,
which monitors millions of blogs, uses the links to articles embedded
on these sites as a proxy for determining what these subjects are. Using
this tracking process as a base, PEJ staff compiles the lists of links
weekday each day. They capture the top five linked-to stories on each
list (25 stories each week), and reads, watches or listens to these
posts and conducts a content analysis of their subject matter, just as
it does for the mainstream press in its weekly News Coverage Index. It follows the same coding methodology as that of the NCI. Note: When the NMI was launched in January 2009, another web-tracking site Technorati
was similarly monitoring blogs and social media. PEJ originally
captured both Technorati's and Icerocket's daily aggregation. In recent
months, though, this component of Technorati's site has been down with
no indication of when it might resume.
The priorities of the bloggers are measured in terms of percentage
of links. Each time a news blog or social media Web page adds a link to
its site directing its readers to a news story, it suggests that the
author of the blog places at least some importance on the content of
that article. The user may or may not agree with the contents of the
article, but they feel it is important enough to draw the reader's
attention to it. PEJ measures the topics that are of most interest to
bloggers by compiling the quantitative information on links and
analyzing the results.
For the examination of the links from Twitter, PEJ staff monitors the tracking site Tweetmeme.
Similar to Icerocket, Tweetmeme measures the number of times a link to a
particular story or blog post is tweeted and retweeted. Then, as we do
with Icerocket, PEJ captures the five most popular linked-to pages each
weekday under the heading of "news" as determined by Tweetmeme's method
of categorization. And as with the other data provided in the NMI, the
top stories are determined in terms of percentage of links. (One minor
difference is that Tweetmeme offers the top links over the prior 24
hours while the list used on Icerocket offers the top links over the
previous 48 hours.)
It was Sarah Palin and her controversial “One Nation” bus tour
that led bloggers back to politics.
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