News Index
On January 10, Google announced the introduction of Search plus Your World which provides personal results to those using Google Search in addition to the standard search results. Thus, if you search "pancake" you get the standard search result of photos and recipes for pancakes, but also photos that you may have uploaded to your own albums of pancakes, blog posts shared by your Google+ friends about pancakes-and photos of a friend's dog named Pancake. What's not a part of the new personal search results are posts on the Twitter and Facebook platforms. Instead, the results come from Google's newer and as of yet less popular social network, Google+, its photo sharing site Picasa and its blogging tool, Blogger as well. Google and Twitter were at odds over what lay behind the absence of these posts. Twitter's general council, Alex Macgillivray called it a "Bad day for the Internet" and the company released a statement saying they were not pleased about their exclusion. Google issued a response noting that it was Twitter that "chose not to renew their agreement [to include their updates in search results] with us." Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt added that Google+ content is not being favored over Twitter and Facebook by the search engine, and if Twitter or Facebook give permission to access their content, it will be included. While Facebook has yet to make a statement on the Search plus Your World controversy, it is the most popular of the social networks with over 800 million active users (defined by the company as those who have logged in at least once a month.) Twitter executives, by comparison, said as of September 2011 they had 100 million active users, half of which tweet daily, according to PC Mag. Google+ reported 62 million users at the end of 2011. One blogger declared the dustup the "first real Internet cat fight of 2012" and discussion about the changes to Google Search made Google the No. 1 topic on blogs for the week of January 9-13, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Bloggers debated everything from privacy issues to monopoly concerns to other potential far-reaching implications that the new search tool brought to light. "Both sides are being disingenuous, and the real issue is about control over social content - and users of both services are the ones who wind up losing in the end," said Mathew Ingram of Gigaom. "[Y]ou don't have to get into legal issues to see why Google's new product as it appears now takes the company into dangerous territory," wrote Steven Levy, a senior writer at Wired. "Even if Google takes all sorts of grief from the government (not to mention users and the press) over this, the biggest end result could be new scrutiny on its two main rivals..." wrote Eric Eldon on Tech Crunch. "Facebook may be the Google of the future, but Google is the Google of the present. And maybe Google is just trying to see what it can get away with ahead of what we can expect to be habitually slow federal interest in whatever moves it makes." Overall, bloggers did not see the upside for internet users in Google's move. "First, in the near term this will be bad for end users. Second, the root of the problem are Google's economics for search. The two point are intimately related," wrote Continuations.* "It's time to stop with the tantrums and the power struggles and realize we all get farther and the WEB gets farther, when you do what's best for users and help them find the content THEY'RE looking for wrote Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media. "Not the content you're agenda wants to show. Isn't that what all three sites are supposed to be about anyway?" "[I]f Google wants to try to compete with Facebook, do it on the side, don't sully your core competency," wrote Nitasha Tiku at Beta Beat, "Besides, if you really wanted to find out what your friends were thinking, would you search Google+? Or Twitter and Facebook? Exactly. This muddies the water without adding any real value." A few bloggers were fans of Search plus Your World. "Google could feasibly enable us to search within our own Google docs, Calendar events, Music library, Contacts, Gmail messages and more. In essence, Google becomes not only how you find the nearest reputable plumber; it's how you search your life. Imagine the impact this could have on how consumers spend their time online," wrote Shannon Johnson at Radian 6 Super Junior on Twitter
The No. 1 story on Twitter this week was Super Junior, the Korean boy band. The 10-person singing group-ranging in age from 24 to 28- has reached the top of the charts in several countries, including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines and is extremely popular on Twitter, with fans hungry for the latest news. In the past month, Super Junior has been one of the top Twitter topics in three out of four weeks and was the No. 1 story on Twitter once before, the week of December 26-30. In addition, one member of the group, Siwon Choi, who tweets in English, was the No. 2 story the week of December 19-23. The group, formed in 2005, had 13 members at its peak and once claimed to be the world's largest boy band. Over time, several members have left the group to enlist into the South Korean military. Super Junior has released over 20 records and has been divided into smaller groups (with names like Super Junior-Happy, Super Junior-M and Super Junior-T), targeting different audiences. This week, the excitement about Super Junior concerned photographs tweeted by members of the group-as well as some who left the group for mandatory military service. Kim HeeChul, who left the group for the South Korean military, tweeted a photograph of himself with the caption "happy new years." Other members of the group shared photos of themselves and words of thanks to their fans. Siwon Choi shared an image taken while traveling in Japan. Tweeters voiced their love for the group, especially surrounding Super Junior winning four awards at the Golden Disk Award show in Osaka, Japan on January 11. "4 awards ;A; SUPER JUNIOR YOU ARE THE BEST <3 twitpic.com/85yyxs," wrote Rai, including a photograph of the group with its awards. "The record says it all. Super Junior the last man standing! Congratulations to the boys! ^^" wrote Minnie. "Super Junior has received Popular Award thrice in a row^^ Congrats Super Junior. Let's make it ten times in a row in the future <3" said StayTrueToSuJu. Other News in Blogs Tech stories made up the majority of top blog subjects last week.
The No. 2 story was about the popular tablet, Asus Transformer Prime. Ubergizmo's positive review of the device published in November continues to be widely shared over blogs. The tablet looks a lot like an iPad and is being sued for trademark infringement (but not by Apple). Only a month after the device's initial release, Asus introduced an updated version of the tablet, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. In third place on blogs was discussion about how to optimize search engine results for a website. Tips included blogging constantly and making use of social media channels the same way one would main websites. The No. 4 story was a piece from Programmable Web announcing it added 46 Application Programming Interfaces-or web-based tools-to its web services directory. Services included AwardWallet, which lets users manage their airline reward balances and travel itineraries and iHelpDesk, a cloud-based customer service platform that lets organizations track service issues, manage email and other customer service tasks. Wrapping up the top-five news stories was news that the singer Beyoncé had a baby with her husband, rapper Jay-Z. The new father also released a song about his daughter, named Blue Ivy, whose crying is heard on the track. The Rest of the News on Twitter Super Junior was not the only group of musicians with Justin Bieber haircuts registering on the New Media Index this week. In second place was the British-Irish boy band One Direction. The group was among the top stories on Twitter three times since the beginning of December. Last week, Twitter was abuzz over a photo of one of the members of the group asleep with a sandwich in his mouth along with a video of the group thanking their fans after finding out they were nominated for a Brit Award.
At No. 3 was the man himself, Justin Bieber, who shared two videos of his "swagger coach" Ryan Good. One was of Good making a scene at a fast food restaurant and the other was of Good and actress Ashley Benson lip syncing to a Carly Rae Jespen song. Jepson was a c In fourth place was information from OperationSAFE, an organization that seeks to help children recover from traumatic experiences. The organization's founder, Jonathan Wilson shared stories related to OperationSAFE's mission, including one about the suicide rate in Japan falling in 2011 and another about how the organization helps children through art, song, games, playing and other ways. Much of the tweets mentioning OperationSAFE shared links to an application to become a disaster relief volunteer in Japan. And the fifth most-Tweeted news story for the week was the lineup for the 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a popular days-long event that will be headed by The Black Keys, Radiohead, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg this year. YouTube A cruise ship tragedy was one of the most-viewed news videos on YouTube last week when the Costa Concordia ran aground the night of Friday, January 13, just hours into a Mediterranean cruise. The luxury cruise liner, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew members, had its hull ripped open when it hit a reef off Italy's Giglio Island and began taking on water after the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, made an unauthorized deviation from the programmed course. At least 11 people died and 28 remain missing. The No. 3 news video, from Russia Today, showed the Costa Concordia lying on its side with a 160-foot gash in its hull. The No. 5 video, also from Russia Today, was an amateur video showing the dramatic evacuation of passengers on lifeboats to the Tuscan shore.
About the New Media Index
The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of 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. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compares with the narrative in the traditional press. A detailed description of the NMI methodology, which was recently modified in August 2011, is available here. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from online postings. By Emily Guskin and Sovini Tan, PEJ
The Project for Excellence in Journalism did not publish a news index report this week. However, the data is available here.
For the week of January 2-6, stories about the presidential campaign, most prominently featuring Rep. Ron Paul, constituted the No. 4 subject on blogs, according to PEJ's New Media Index. The results of the Iowa caucuses-where Paul finished third-and an opinion piece claiming Paul's libertarian beliefs present a challenge to liberals led to complex conversations on different sides of the political divide. Some of those bloggers criticized the mainstream media for not devoting adequate attention to the Paul campaign, a fairly common view of Paul supporters. A PEJ analysis of the last six months of campaign coverage has found that the Texas Congressman received less news coverage than every GOP candidate other than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum. He was a significant presence in just 5% of the campaign stories. (A candidate is a significant presence if at least 25% of the story is about that person.) But online, the story is different. On blogs, Twitter and YouTube, Paul's supporters are visible, passionate and active. Indeed, a recent PEJ study found that from May through November, Paul received significantly more positive support on blogs than any of the other presidential candidates-47% of the blog statements about him were positive, compared with 15% negative and 38% neutral. A separate PEJ analysis found that he also received the most flattering assessments of any candidate on Twitter in the past six months, at 54% positive, 17% negative and 28% neutral. Thus far in the 2012 campaign, it seems clear that Paul, and his libertarian message, have struck a chord in the social media universe. Iowa Caucuses Supporters of Paul disagreed over how to evaluate his third place finish, at 21% of the vote, in the January 3 Iowa caucuses. Some saw the results as hopeful. (Paul finished second, attracting 23% of the vote, in the January 10 New Hampshire primary.) "All things considered, Ron Paul did amazing," pronounced Eric W. at The Real Effect. "When you factor in his complete lack of media coverage and backstabbing by the GOP, his results are all that much more encouraging." "Don't listen to TV's talking heads' assessments of Ron Paul, check his record and his principles," implored David McElroy at Only Way. "He'll help us to get honest gold and silver, peace and freedom! Paul can win! Vote for yourself. Vote Ron Paul for truth, justice, and liberty for all!" "The MAIN thing to take away from this is that RON PAUL IS ELECTABLE!!!" cheered TommyPaine, a commenter at Daily Paul. "As the campaign moves forward, more and more people will hear the Ron Paul message, see more debates, and become aware that ONLY Ron Paul is likely to BEAT Obama in the GENERAL ELECTION!" Others hoping for an outright victory were less sanguine about the results. "Certainly it's a disappointment," declared Tom Woods, Jr. "Some people counter that what matters are the delegates, but in my opinion what actually matters right now is momentum, and an Iowa victory would have been great in that department." Regardless of their reaction, however, an article in Business Insider gave his followers hope and drew a lot of attention. According to the story entitled "Ron Paul May Have Secretly Won the Iowa Caucuses," part of the campaign's plan was to not only win votes, but also to make sure that Paul supporters stuck around after the vote in order to be selected as county delegates, a strategy that might enable Paul to earn additional delegates heading into the Republican National Convention. That generated praise for the campaign's detailed planning. "The gist is that the Paul people are very organized and made sure that their supporters stuck around after the initial counts to run for delegates to the county conventions," explained Seth at Enik Rising. "The naive campaign treats a caucus like a primary and leaves as soon as the voting is done. The smart campaign realizes that the caucus is just the first step in the selection of delegates and sticks around to try to control the post-caucus selections." "We could conceivably, then, end up with an unknown but fairly sizable number of Paul delegates...in Tampa based on the rules in the various states," suggested Frontloading HQ. "Romney in that scenario wins the nomination but the Paul folks become increasingly likely to hold some sway over some planks in the platform." Ron Paul as a Challenge to Liberals Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, focused on Paul for a different reason. On December 29, Matt Stoller, a former Senior Policy Advisor to Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, wrote a piece on the blog Naked Capitalism that sparked a philosophical debate over the tenets of liberalism. According to Stoller, Paul represented a challenge to liberals because some of his beliefs, such as the opposition to American intervention abroad and opposition to the Federal Reserve, are progressive ideas that liberals should favor. Instead, he claims, most liberals support policies that go against these traditional liberal notions. A few prominent liberals backed Stoller. "Paul's candidacy forces those truths about the Democratic Party to be confronted," agreed Glenn Greenwald at Salon. "He forces into the mainstream political discourse vital ideas that are otherwise completely excluded given that they are at odds with the bipartisan consensus." Most left-wing bloggers, however, rejected Stoller's argument regarding libertarianism. "Stoller's post is an incoherent mess," wrote David Atkins at Common Dreams. "Liberalism is and has always been about intervention. It is the opposite of libertarianism, and always has been...Ron Paul is a detestable creature who presents no challenge at all to liberal orthodoxy properly understood." "This progressive, at least, isn't confused by the Ron Pauls of the world," concluded Wickersham's Conscience. "Libertarianism is a doctrine for a world that hasn't existed since industrialization. It's premised on fantasies and backed by folks with serious denial issues." Some on the left thought the debate was missing the more important point. "If you're a single-issue voter who only cares about non-interventionism, then Ron Paul STILL isn't your guy. Why? Because Ron Paul isn't a singe-issue candidate," argued Bob Cesca. "He wants to do a lot of terrible things to you... So snap the hell out of your idealistic, tunnel-vision stupor and wise up."* CNN Censorship? Ron Paul was also a prominent presence on YouTube last week as the second most-watched news video featured a cable malfunction that left his supporters crying foul. On the day of the January 3 Iowa caucuses, CNN reporter Dana Bash was interviewing Cpl. Jesse Thorsen, a Paul supporter, about his foreign policy views when the satellite signal dropped and the segment was immediately cut. For some Paul supporters, this was not a technical problem, but rather a blatant instance of censorship by corporate-owned media wishing to block anti-war views. "You can see that they have the technology to make the feed ‘go bad' whenever they want," reasoned YouTube user solarpowerhome. "CNN says the reason for this was a failed satellite feed. When they come back to the newsroom if you look behind him on the left side there is another caucus feed that is likely using the same sat. uplink that is...grooving along just fine."
"I'm tired MSM never said and report about Ron Paul," agreed icemaxwell2000. Not every Paul supporter agreed that there is a conspiracy to keep Paul from getting attention. Addressing the claims that the GOP was stealing the Iowa election from Paul, Duncan Kunz wrote on the Intellectual Oddities Network, "I have been a Ron Paul supporter since 1988, but I learned early the difference between the way things are and the way I wanted them to be. Ron Paul did not win in Iowa because his views are too radical for some of the voters...If you think that it's some sort of plot every time things don't go your way, you are simply denying reality." YouTube Elsewhere on YouTube, the spotlight was on a former Australian Prime Minister who eagerly hoisted an adult libation. During a January 4 match between Australia and India at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Bob Hawke, Australia's Prime Minister from 1983 to 1991, was handed a plastic container of ale as one fan shouted "one for the country, Robert!" Without hesitation, the 82-year-old former leader took the glass and downed it as fans cheered him on. This was not the first time he had accepted an alcoholic challenge. In his autobiography, he recalled drinking two and half pints in 11 seconds during his time at Oxford University in the 1950s.
The Rest of the Week's News on Blogs Aside from politics, rumors and controversies surrounding new technologies drew significant attention in the blogosphere. The No. 1 subject was the concept of search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO-a process aimed at improving the visibility and presence of a web page. Bloggers linked to several articles about the technique, including a guide on noobpreneur.com about what questions a company should ask when hiring a web company to improve their site. They also highlighted a post on The Daily SEO Blog that reviewed predictions from 2011 and made new prognostications for the coming year. Apple was the No. 2 subject as bloggers focused mostly on rumors of an important event involving the company scheduled for late January in New York. While it appeared unlikely that Apple would introduce the iPad 3 or its interactive television initiative, some speculated it would be an advertising or publishing announcement. In the previous week (December 26-30), Apple was the No. 1 subject on blogs amid speculation about a new iPhone launch in the fall of 2012. Pictures of an art installation by Yayoi Kusama were the third-biggest subject. At the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Kusama painted an entire room white, and allowed children to place stickers anywhere they wanted. The piece was entitled The Obliteration Room. The presidential campaign was fourth. In addition to the discussion of Ron Paul, bloggers linked to an interview with Rick Santorum who questioned how Barack Obama, as a black man, could not be in the pro-life camp on the abortion issue. Google was the No. 5 story as most of the attention focused around an advertising-related controversy. The internet giant, which has a policy against paid links in search engines, conducted their own marketing campaign related to the Chrome browser. The British Guardian questioned whether this campaign violated the company's own rules regarding sponsored posts. Google responded that it never approved sponsored posts and said independent bloggers paid by Google were responsible for the marketing campaign. The Rest of the Week's News on Twitter On Twitter, it was another week led by international boy bands. For the third time in the last month, the British-Irish boy band One Direction was among the most linked-to subjects. Last week it was No. 1 as fans linked to another edition of the group's video tour diary.
News that members of the Korean boy band Super Junior had taken part in a reality TV show named "We A popular tweet called "RT if you Did all of these Before!!" was the No. 3 most linked-to page. The tweet, posted by @January11, asked if people had done certain mundane tasks in their life, such as walking into a room before forgetting why you were there and drawing a sun in the corner of a paper as a child. If they had, the goal was to get users to "retweet" the message so others could see it. A correspondence regarding one customer's regrettable run-in with the online company PayPal was No. 4. According to the complaint, PayPal policy forced the buyer to destroy a classic violin because there was a dispute as to whether the item was "counterfeit." And a video for a new song with crude lyrics by rapper Mac Miller was the fifth most popular page. About the New Media Index The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of 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. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compares with the narrative in the traditional press. A detailed description of the NMI methodology, which was modified in August 2011, is available here. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from online postings. By Paul Hitlin and Sovini Tan, PEJ
The Project for Excellence in Journalism did not publish a news index report this week. However, the data is available here.
"If people are buying through mobile online retail sites, they're most likely doing it on Apple devices," wrote Darrell Etherington of gigaom, one of many bloggers to comment on and share the story which ranked No.1 on blogs from December 26-30, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Even though Android enjoys a healthy lead in overall global market share for smartphones versus the iPhone-no doubt a result of Android's ability to exist on multiple devices versus the single iOS smartphone product line-it seems that iOS users continue to carry the day for mobile shopping," wrote Powerhouse USA.
Some bloggers put the data in their own terms. "In other words, 92% of 18% of a tiny sliver (3.74%) of total sales in the three weeks leading up to Christmas came from iOS devices. Not quite as impressive as the original headline suggested," wrote iPhone News. Bloggers also discussed another ecommerce story last week. The No. 2 subject was a piece arguing that online price comparison sites are dying. According to the author, Paul Nikkel, "the golden days seem to be behind us as the old big names slump in traffic and value." He cites examples like Pricegrabber and Kelkoo as examples of such comparison sites that either slipped in traffic rankings or were sold. Charlie Stross at Anti Pope saw this as more evidence of significant changes in online retailing. "And what are the long-term implications if, in 10 years' time, the only way you can check the price of an item in a store is to point your camerphone at it-and the price will be tailored specifically to you and not available to anyone else?"* he wrote. And while this story didn't delve into its potential impact on ecommerce, bloggers also shared news reported by the tech site BGR that Apple would launch a "completely redesigned iPhone in fall 2012." The article, which ranked No. 4 for the week, claims that the new phone will be made out of a rubber or plastic material with an aluminum backplate. For months before the release of the iPhone 4S in October, bloggers speculated about its features and design-with many of the rumors proving untrue. This time, they took the news about the next incarnation with a grain of salt, not trusting Geller based on previous unfounded rumors he shared. "Jonathan Geller of BGR was wrong on just about every rumor leading up to the release of the iPhone 4S, so I've started to take his "sources" about as serious as I take users on Yahoo Answers when it comes to Apple rumors," wrote Eli Courey at Mac Daddy News, "With that being said, I do think a fall of 2012 release for the next iPhone would be a good guess." "BGR has a mixed track record when it comes to hardware rumors, coming relatively close on Apple's late 2011 iPhone lineup while missing with a claim of a redesigned WiMAX iPhone 5 exclusive to Sprint," wrote Eric Slivka at MacRumors. "Of course, all of this is merely speculation at this point, as all Apple rumors are until the company actually decides to take the stage and announce something. So those of you hoping for a redesign shouldn't be excited just yet," wrote Adam Mills at Gotta Be Mobile. Other News on Blogs At No. 3 was a slide show from Mashable that showed how co-founders from popular startup companies met each other. The startups covered in the piece included Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, Foursquare, Sugar Inc., Spotify and several more. For example, the founders of DNA 11 met in kindergarten and two of the founders of Airbnb met when they became roommates through Craigslist. In fifth place was discussion of the Asus Transformer Prime, a tablet deemed "fabulous" by Hubert Nguyen of Ubergizmo in his November review of the device. The Asus Transformer was the top story on blogs December 19-23 and December 5-9 and bloggers seemed to agree with the rave reviews. An array of popular singers dominated the conversation on Twitter last week, with a story about upcoming tech trends also causing a stir.
In first place was Super Junior, a Korean pop group, and one of its singers, Siwon Choi, who happens to tweet in En Discussion this past week revolved around the group having the first-ever album to rank No. 1 nine consecutive times on the Filipino charts and its fans not being informed in advance of a recording. Tweeters also heavily retweeted photos that Choi took. At No. 2 on Twitter was perennial favorite Justin Bieber, including video of him performing Christmas songs at the Disney World Christmas Parade. In the YouTube video, Bieber sings Mistletoe and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. An audio clip of a Lady Gaga song came in third place on Twitter and a humorous image of text conversation was the No. 4 most-discussed story on the social media outlet. At No. 5 on Twitter for the week was a Mashable article about five tech trends to watch for in 2012. Those trends included a micro-payment economy, where one makes money selling tiny items with incremental upgrades; an increased number of light, thin and powerful laptops; and what the article calls "social/digital exhaustion" or people reevaluating their social existence online and dropping off of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for a variety of reasons. The majority who retweeted the article did not opine on it, but those who did had a mixed response. "No geek's talk required. Just relevant to most of us here," tweeted rudileung. "Ok. Now I am officially - scared," wrote Luann Lee. "Interesting --> Several will impact #mrx" wrote John Tomas, referring to market research. YouTube The most popular news video last week was of the delivery man from hell who was caught on a surveillance camera throwing a computer monitor over a fence. Uploaded on December 19, the clip shows a FedEx delivery man taking a package from the back of his van and tossing a computer monitor box over a gate onto the driveway. The video's uploader wrote in the description, "The sad part is that I was home at the time with the front door wide open. All he would have had to do was ring the bell on the gate. Now I have to return my monitor since it is broken." FedEx released a statement saying that the company is "handling the employee according to our disciplinary policies." The only difference in the top five news videos on YouTube last week was their ranking. The No. 1 video last week, the FedEx delivery man, was No. 2 the week of December 17-23. That pushed the footage from North Korean state media of people crying over the death of Kim Jong Il to the No. 2 spot, after it had been the most-viewed video one week earlier.
About the New Media Index The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of 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. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compares with the narrative in the traditional press. A detailed description of the NMI methodology, which was recently modified in August 2011, is available here. (For this week's NMI, Twitturly was down, so Tweetmeme was the sole source for Twitter stories.) *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from online postings. By Emily Guskin and Sovini Tan, PEJ Photo credit: Jesse Holcomb
If momentum in presidential politics is something that builds on itself, then Rick Santorum's last-minute surge to finish in a virtual tie for first with Mitt Romney in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses benefited from the narrative in the news media.
The subject of momentum, indeed, was the biggest component of the coverage in the last two weeks before Iowa citizens voted, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. More than a quarter of all the coverage across the country (27%) was focused on polls, strategy and momentum-much of it about dark horse Santorum dramatically gaining ground in the waning days of the Iowa campaign, even though few late polls showed Santorum actually ahead. "Santorum is surging. A CNN poll of registered Iowa Republicans released Wednesday puts Santorum in third place with 16 percent of the vote-his highest share yet," said the Weekly Standard magazine on December 29. The December 29 Des Moines Register declared that "Signs that Rick Santorum is suddenly a contender in the race for the Republican nomination for president were all over Iowa on Thursday." A final average of Iowa polls going into the voting had shown Romney with a razor thin lead over Paul and Santorum a highly competitive third. 
The analysis of the framing of the coverage of the Iowa caucus contest from December 19-January 2 was conducted by PEJ using computer algorithmic technology by Crimson Hexagon that monitors coverage in more than 11,500 news media outlets.
The candidate who matched Santorum vote for vote in Iowa was Romney, and he, too, saw the storyline about him grow more optimistic as the voting neared, particularly after former frontrunner Newt Gingrich's support began to erode. And in many of those news accounts, it was his demeanor that seemed to signal brightening prospects. On December 21, an Associated Press story saw Romney's criticism of Gingrich in "uncharacteristically sharp language" as evidence of his strengthened standing in the race and "newfound optimism after weeks of concern inside his campaign." A week later, another story talked about "a confident Romney campaign in the final five days of the campaign...in strong position to win outright or finish in second place behind Texas Rep. Ron Paul." If Romney's aggressive campaigning was taken as a sign of confidence, that opposite was true of Gingrich, whose attacks were portrayed as near desperation. "Trying to reverse a slide in Iowa by positioning himself as the positive alternative to his trash-talking rivals [Gingrich] unleashed an unexpectedly harsh attack Tuesday against his chief rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul," stated a December 27 Los Angeles Times story. The same day, the AP echoed those sentiments with a single sentence: "No more Mr. Nice Guy." For Paul, who finished third in the caucuses, Iowa was seen as a hospitable venue given his grassroots appeal and strong organization. He "is in contention to win the Iowa caucuses and do well in the New Hampshire primary..." reported a December 20 Associated Press story that nevertheless downplayed his chances to win the nomination. A related topic, political advertising and the role of Political Action Committees, accounted for an additional 10% of the Iowa coverage from December 19-January 2. Much of the coverage focused on the targeting of one-time Iowa frontrunner Gingrich. A January 1 USA Today story reported on a study showing that "45% of all the political ads in Iowa have been negative spots directed at Gingrich...The ads have had an impact: Gingrich is now at 12% in the Iowa Poll-well behind Romney and Ron Paul-with just a few days to go before voters here begin the 2012 presidential election season." Candidate records and the issues is No. 2 The second biggest focus of coverage in the final days before the caucuses was the candidate records and their positions on issues, something that critics have long decried the press for ignoring. Issues and records made up 19% of the coverage. And one major story that emerged was an old controversy over newsletters published under Ron Paul's name in the 1990s. A New York Times story stated that as Paul had emerged "as a real Republican contender in Iowa, [he] is receiving new focus for decades-old unbylined columns in his political newsletters that included racist, anti-gay and anti-Israel passages that he has since disavowed." As the controversy simmered, Reuters reported on December 29 that after "drawing fire for anti-Israeli and racist, anti-gay messages contained in newsletters published under his name two decades ago," the Paul campaign issued a statement saying. "Dr. Paul is the most pro-Israel candidate in this race." Rick Perry also generated some media attention on December 27 when he shifted his stance to broaden his opposition to abortion to include cases involving rape and incest. And Romney made news for what he didn't say, when he declined to take sides in the Washington battle over the payroll tax cut, declaring "I'm not going to get into the back-and-forth on the congressional sausage-making process." One of his sons, Matt Romney, generated a mini-furor of his own by suggesting that President Obama should release his birth certificate before his father would release his tax returns. A contrite Matt Romney later tweeted that he was sorry for a "dumb joke." The Iowa Caucus Phenomenon The third-largest media theme in the final run-up to the Iowa voting involved the caucus system itself. That accounted for 16% of the coverage and was particularly prevalent in the first week (January 19-26), when it accounted for 22%. And one element of this was to discount the possible outcome of the race. "Ask President Gephardt, President Huckabee or President Harkin whether winning the Iowa caucuses helped them snag the nomination of their parties, let alone the White House," wrote columnist Hank Plante. "Tuesday's much-hyped voting in Iowa is as meaningless as last year's New Year's resolution." Another theme here was that Iowa isn't what it used to be. One December 25 Associated Press story saw distinctively less emphasis on retail politicking in 2012. "It was...a less aggressive personal courtship of Iowans in a campaign that, instead, has largely gravitated around a series of 13 nationally televised debates, a crush of television ads and interviews on media outlets... " the story reported. The Ground Game and Iowa Voters If the Iowa campaign featured less of a ground game than usual, it might help explain the moderate amount of attention coverage devoted to that theme. All told, 15% of the coverage from December19-January 2 involved the candidates campaigning on the ground, although that theme did increase in the second week to 20%. Some of that later coverage focused on Santorum's efforts to capitalize on his rise in the polls with some old fashioned handshaking. A January 1 Boston Globe story reported that Santorum "spent the last Saturday afternoon before the Tuesday presidential nominating caucus hopping between towns in Marion County, making his final pitch to voters who gave Mike Huckabee a huge margin in 2008." A considerably smaller portion of the coverage, 6%, was devoted to what was on the minds of Iowa voters. One of those key storylines was the indecision of Iowans who were still weighing choices late in the game. A January 1 USA Today story reported on statewide poll showing that 40% of likely caucus goers "might still change their minds" and quoted one mother from Grimes Iowa saying, "It'll depend on my prayer and my gut." About this Report For this special edition of the NCI, PEJ employed a combination of traditional media research methods, based on long-standing rules regarding content analysis, along with computer coding software developed by Crimson Hexagon. The software is able to analyze the textual content from thousands of web-based articles on news sites and classify such content by identifying statistical patterns in words. The purpose of Crimson Hexagon is to "take as data a potentially large set of text documents, of which a small subset is hand coded into an investigator-chosen set of mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. As output, the methods give approximately unbiased and statistically consistent estimates of the proportion of all documents in each category." Crimson Hexagon software examines online content provided by RSS feeds of thousands of news outlets from the U.S. and around the world. This provides researchers with analysis of a much wider pool of content than conventional human coding can provide. Specifically, the monitors PEJ creates are based on more than 11,500 news web sites. Information on the tool itself can be found at http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/ and the in depth methodologies can be found here http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/products/whitepapers/. The time frame for the analysis is December 19, 2011, to January 2, 2012, which is different than the normal NCI time period. For the analysis, PEJ used the following list of keywords in a Boolean search to narrow the universe to relevant posts: Iowa AND (GOP OR Republican OR caucus) PEJ created a list of themes that were present in coverage of the Iowa caucuses, and trained the monitor to recognize the presence of each theme in online text. Crimson Hexagon's software then analyzed news more than 50,000 stories to determine the percentages of conversation that fell into each category. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
According to PolitiFact.com, a non-partisan watchdog organization owned by the Tampa Bay Times, the assertion by many Democrats that "Republicans voted to end Medicare" earned the dubious honor as Lie of the Year. Democrats had claimed the plan that passed the GOP-controlled House would have ended the popular health program for seniors. PolitiFact determined that while the Republican plan would alter Medicare, it would not "end" or "kill" the popular program. Some liberals, notably New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, disagreed, asserting that the GOP plan for private vouchers changed Medicare so much that it would, in fact, end the program.
For the week of December 19-23, the debate over the Lie of the Year was the No. 3 subject on blogs, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Most of the links went to a post called "PolitiFact R.I.P." by Krugman who said the so-called lie was actually true, and charged that PolitiFact was terrified of being considered partisan if they were to "acknowledge the clear fact that there's a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than the other." Left-wing bloggers overwhelmingly supported Krugman's criticism, arguing that the GOP did try to end Medicare, even if they kept a program around with the same name. Others agreed that PolitiFact was guilty of buying into a false equivalency between lies told by Democrats and those told by Republicans, and that the site's motives were less about facts and more about appearing non-partisan. Conversely, conservatives applauded the award and chastised Democrats for using scare tactics aimed at seniors. While many conservatives acknowledged they do not generally trust PolitiFact-which has previously come under attack from the right-they were glad a prominent organization called out Democrats for using a falsehood. Lie of the Year In the eyes of liberal bloggers, the statement that ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare' was true, and many examined the intricacies of the Ryan proposal to defend that view. Much of the conversation revolved around the definition of the word ‘end.' "Does Paul Ryan want to permanently end Medicare, the way the program is run now?" asked Michael Maiello at Dag Blog. "Well, yes. Does he want to keep the name Medicare so that people don't think he's trying to end Medicare? Yes. Was Politifact wrong last year when it accused Democrats of lying about Paul Ryan wanting to end Medicare? Yes, by any reasonable measure, yes."* "If I take your house, burn it down, but then say that it's still ‘your house,' it's not a lie for you to say that I burned down your house," explained Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect. "The program passed by House Republicans was designed to end the universality of Medicare by sharply reducing its benefits to seniors, and leaving them to fend for themselves." Many questioned PolitiFact's motives. "I believe PolitiFact naming ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare' as Lie of the Year 2011 illustrates false equivalence and the media's overreaction to charges of liberal bias," wrote David K. Sutton at The Left Call. "I think PolitiFact can't help but be influenced by charges of liberal bias in the media." "Of course, it's pretty clear that drawing complaints from liberals is basically the point here," concluded Jonathan Chait on the blog for New York Magazine. "Politifact is a group that requires roughly equal criticism from right and left in order to maintain its credibility. Indeed, it cites such criticism in order to make the case that we should treat it seriously-see, both sides are complaining!" PolitiFact received thousands of emails objecting to its decision and posted a response. After pointing out that other fact-checking sites such as Annenberg's FactCheck.org and the Washington Post's FactChecker agreed with their view that the line was a lie, they defended themselves from claims that they had made themselves useless or, in the words of Jim Newell of Gawker, even "dangerous." "Yes, PolitiFact is dangerous," PolitiFact replied. "We have disrupted the status quo because we're doing what journalists should have been doing for a long time-holding politicians and pundits accountable for their words." Most conservative bloggers agreed with their liberal foes on the political motivation behind PolitiFact's ruling, but supported this specific decision anyway. "The clearly left-leaning Politifact announced what it sees as the Lie of The Year for 2011," posted Nonsensible Shoes. "It turns out the Democrats claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare is a big fat lie. I guess Politifact is trying to remain relevant and appear unbiased. Too little, too late." "While I share Mark Hemingway's concerns about the rise of fact-checking operations, he also points out that it is harder to get one of these operations to point out a misleading claim from the Democrats, so that fact that the Medicare claim topped the list gives this assessment an added level of credibility," decided Tevi Troy at National Review Online. The controversy led some to question whether the idea of a non-partisan and objective fact-checking operation was even viable in the current political climate. "I wrote about the core problem facing the new breed of political fact-checkers: The political right is more factually wrong, meaning that taking a strictly ‘bipartisan' approach will inevitably leave the fact-checkers themselves guilty of phony ‘balance,'" asserted Chris Mooney at DeSmogBlog. "They [fact checkers] have no actual power, so their only influence comes from the public's sense of their legitimacy," decided Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. "And about half of the public leans towards one party and about half of the public leans toward the other. That means PolitiFact and these other outlets need to find some uneasy balance between the parties, too. But that just means the parties will have plenty of opportunities to decide that these are hackish, partisan operations." YouTube On YouTube, the reaction of North Koreans to the passing of the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, drew the most interest-in part because the videos contained scenes that surprised many viewers. Two of the top five most viewed news videos on the site last week, including the No. 1 clip, consisted of North Koreans openly weeping and mourning over the death of their leader for the past 17 years. To many observers, the shots of civilians crying over the death of a dictator who oppressed the North Korean people were shocking and unbelievable. The vast majority of those who left comments about the video refused to believe the emotions were genuine. "This is all fake, these people don't have it in them to cry," commented fypong. "they have been persecuted and oppressed for so long, complete brainwahing by something I can only describe as pure evil." "They were forced to cry otherwise they get killed," agreed alyassitongguapo. "Just imagine, why did these people cry to a man who gave them sufferings, these people are not idiots. But because of fear to die they cried instead of celebrating the death of the dictatorship."
The Rest of the Week's News on Blogs Other than the debate over PolitiFact, technology was the major focus in the blogosphere last week. The No. 1 subject was the same as two weeks ago: positive reviews of the brand new tablet computer called Asus Transformer Prime. Last week, all the links were to an Ubergizmo article which said the device "is easily the best Android tablet and is possibly the best tablet, period," and included many pictures of the computer and a video of someone taking the product out of its packaging. A post on the official Google Blog about future improvements to Google+ was the No. 2 subject. Among the promised additions will be the ability for users to control the volume for different individuals they are having streaming conversations with, and more useful and attractive notifications. The fourth-largest subject was a post on the New York Times technology blog about Apple and Google beginning development of "wearable computers." These new products would make traveling with smartphones easier by attaching them to one's clothes or body, such as being wrapped around a person's wrist. The fifth most linked-to page was a humorous video on the comedy site, Funny or Die. The clip, part of a series called "Drunk History," features an intoxicated man reciting a well-known Christmas poem while famous actors act out his strange utterances. The Week's News on Twitter
On Twitter, there was a heavy emphasis on pop culture news, especially the famous musicians who are
The most linked-to subject was the trailer for the upcoming film The Hobbit, to be released in 2012 based on the J. R. R. Tolkien book of the same name. Siwon Choi, a popular South Korean singer and actor, was the second biggest subject as several of his tweets and pictures were frequently re-tweeted. Among them were a photograph of a sun setting over a city street with the message, "Time will heal all" and a picture of three people looking very excited while anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus. False rumors that American singer Jon Bon Jovi had died, along with his response, constituted the third-biggest topic on Twitter. Responding to reports that he had been found dead in a hotel in Asbury Park, Bon Jovi posed for a picture holding a sign reading, "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey." For the second time in three weeks, the British-Irish boy band One Direction was a popular subject. Last week, a video diary where the group answered questions from fans was the fourth-most tweeted page. And a video of Justin Bieber singing his version of the Christmas song Mistletoe was the fifth Twitter story last week. About the New Media Index The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of 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. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compares with the narrative in the traditional press. A detailed description of the NMI methodology, which was modified in August 2011, is available here. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from online postings. By Paul Hitlin
Coverage of the 2012 presidential race reached its second highest level of the year last week and the campaign narrative increasingly focused on the battle between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, fueled in part by conservative commentators beginning to weigh in on the choice between them. From December 12-18, the campaign accounted for 27% of the newshole, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, up from 24% the previous week. That marks the fifth time in seven weeks that that the campaign has been the top story in the U.S. news media as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which tracks the media agenda by monitoring 52 different news outlets from newspapers, online, cable news, broadcast news and on radio. The race for president was the No. 1 story last week in three of the five media sectors studied, network news, radio news and particularly cable news, where it accounted for a little more than half (51%) of the airtime studied. While attention to the campaign grew, the narrative also narrowed, focusing on the two GOP candidates perceived to be the frontrunners for the nomination. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was the primary figure in 49% of the week’s campaign stories. Mitt Romney was the primary focus in 32%. (To register as a primary newsmaker, a figure must be mentioned in at least 50% of a story.) In other news, coverage of the economy, the No. 2 story, continued to decline last week, dropping to 10% of the newshole studied, down from 14% last week and 17% the week before that. The majority of coverage was about the continuing Pennsylvania Avenue battle over whether to extend the payroll tax cut. A related subject, the threat of a government shutdown that was eventually averted, was the seventh story, accounting for 3% of the newshole. The formal end of the eight contentious years of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, meanwhile, went out with a relative whimper. It measured as the third biggest story of the week, filling 8% of the newshole studied. That was highest level of coverage about Iraq since August 30-September 5, 2010 when President Obama announced the end of the U.S. combat mission there. Even with last week’s increase in coverage, however, overall attention to Iraq in 2011 fell to less than 1% of the newshole. That marks a steep four-year decline in coverage after the conflict was the No. 1 story (15%) in 2007. If there was a theme that echoed throughout last week’s press narrative, it was uncertainty and concern about the kind of Iraq that U.S. troops were leaving behind. The No. 4 story last week was the scandal triggered by the arrest of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on charges of sexually assaulting young boys (accounting for 5% of the newshole). That marked the fourth time in the last six week that the case has finished among the top five weekly stories. Last week, some legal observers were surprised when Sandusky waived a scheduled preliminary hearing. Rounding out the top five subjects was a series of different stories about the U.S. educational system (3%), including a look the proliferation of online schools. The 2012 Campaign For all intents and purposes, the media treated the GOP presidential fight as a two-man race last week. Other than Gingrich and Romney, the GOP candidate who got the most press attention last week, Ron Paul, was a dominant newsmaker in a modest 6% of the campaign stories.
The week started off poorly for Romney as the media discussed whether his offer of a $10,000 wager with Rick Perry during a December 10 debate made him seem out of touch with the average and economically stressed American. A December 12 ABC report noted that “from the debate site at Drake University in Des Moines to the Twitter verse, the former Massachusetts governor’s audacious wager was the only thing anyone was talking about.” And in many media quarters, it was treated as a gaffe. Two days later, a Wall Street Journal story cited polling data that shed light on both the Gingrich phenomenon and the electability issue that dogs him. While Gingrich had opened up a 17-point lead over Romney among Republicans in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the story added that “half of all voters say they wouldn't vote for Mr. Gingrich if he were the Republican nominee, compared with 44% who say they wouldn't vote for Mr. Romney.” Faced with polls showing Gingrich leading him, Romney made news by becoming noticeably more aggressive in his attacks on his rival. “Mitt Romney is pulling out all the stops, going after Newt Gingrich with just nineteen days till the Iowa caucuses,” asserted MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall on December 15. One of those attacks, widely repeated in the campaign echo chamber, was an interview with the New York Times in which Romney appeared to characterize Gingrich as “zany.” And as Romney began to sharpen his attacks on Gingrich, some in the conservative media universe—perhaps mindful of the obstacles facing Gingrich in a general election—also trained their guns on him. One notable case was the influential National Review magazine’s “anti-endorsement” of the former Speaker. Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel show on December 15, popular conservative talk host Glenn Beck blasted Gingrich as too liberal, saying “he is not a small government guy. I think he would be an awful president.” Addressing the conservative media attacks on Gingrich during a CNN appearance on December 15, analyst John Avlon declared that “You're starting to see these attacks [have] an effect. You're starting to see Newt Gingrich's poll numbers soften just a bit…The conservative movement is trying to throw themselves in front of the Newt bus…because they know he would be a disastrous nominee for the GOP.” And so a week that started with Romney being attacked for an ill-conceived bet ended up with Gingrich under a fairly concerted assault from some right-leaning media heavyweights. The Rest of the Week’s News Coverage of the economy (10%) hit a five-week low last week, but it did lead in one media sector, online news, where it filled 16% of the newshole studied. The dominant storyline by far, was the legislative maneuvering over whether to extend payroll tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year. By week’s end, the big news was that the Senate had overwhelmingly approved a measure to do that. (But this week, the House balked, making the fate of the bill uncertain.) The final departure of U.S. troops from Iraq generated a spike in media attention (8%) to a war that had virtually vanished from the headlines, but much of that coverage was cautious and subdued. On the December 15 NBC newscast, correspondent Richard Engel didn’t paint a very optimistic portrait of what the troops are leaving behind. “I am worried about what happens in this country,” he said. “I’m worried that the violence could return…The infrastructure in this country is still very poor. In many parts of Baghdad, there are only a few hours of electricity every day.” The Penn State scandal re-emerged last week among the top five week weekly stories (5%) after Sandusky’s legal team opted against a preliminary hearing. The story generated the most attention on network television (9%). Coverage of education (3%) was largely the province of the nation’s newspapers last week, where it registered as the No. 1 subject (14% of front-page coverage).
Newsmakers of the Week The Republican primary battle produced the top newsmakers last week with Newt Gingrich registering as a dominant newsmaker in 12% of all the stories studied by PEJ, followed by Mitt Romney (8%) at No. 2. (Ron Paul was No. 6, at 1%). President Obama, who has been trailing behind the Republican candidates in the amount of coverage in recent weeks, was the third biggest newsmaker, at 6%. The No. 4 and 5 newsmakers last week were key figures in the Penn State sexual abuse scandal—primary defendant Jerry Sandusky (3%) and assistant Penn State coach Mike McQueary (2%) who testified last week that he had seen Sandusky assaulting a young boy in the shower. About the NCI PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,000 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on "newshole," or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV. (See Our Methodology.) In addition, these reports also include a rundown of the week’s leading newsmakers, a designation given to people who account for at least 50% of a given story. Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ
The No. 2 subject on blogs from December 5-9 was BuzzFeed's 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011. Largely the province of news magazines in an earlier media era, the internet-based BuzzFeed, has now moved into the scene, ranking and sharing some of the most dramatic news events of the year. The photos selected ranged from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to students being pepper-sprayed at UC Davis, from the tornado in Joplin, Missouri to the drought in East Africa.
The images were so popular they resulted in BuzzFeed's biggest traffic day ever, according to the site's founder, Jonah Peretti. A week after its posting, the page of images had been viewed almost eight million times. The biggest referrer to the page, by far, was Facebook, which was responsible for over half of the referrals; over 4.5 million clicks came from the social networking behemoth. At a distant second was Reddit, an aggregation site where users post links and then "up vote" posts to give them higher billing on the site, referring about 253,000 people to the images. Twitter was not as much of a driver though certainly had some influence. The network referred about 191,000 visitors over the week's time and the story was tweeted about 43,000 times. BuzzFeed already gets about half of its traffic from social sources, but the total popularity of this story far surpasses the usual draw. Another heavily shared post by BuzzFeed, for example, The 100 Best Signs at the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear, garnered 993,447 in its first 30 days online, with 327,473 referrals from Facebook. The range of photos selected, according to Megan Garber of Nieman Journalism Lab, may have added to their sharability. "I might not connect personally with photos of, say, the U.S. war in Afghanistan," Garber wrote, "But I might know one of the protestors who was pepper-sprayed at UC Davis last month. And I might share the post because of that connection."
Even though this was mainly a web and social media story, the mainstream press was still a big part of the ne While most bloggers simply linked to the photos-a sharing style more common on Twitter or Facebook than blogs-a few took time to opine on the compelling photographs. "As usual in the December, it's time for selections of moments that marked the entire year," wrote Best Bookmarks, "They are impressive captures in several themes but all very powerful and emotional."* "What a year! Here's to 2012 being a more quiet and less destructive year..." wrote Danny Devriendt at Scoop. Asus Transformer Prime The No. 1 story on blogs for the week was about a new tablet device: The Asus Transformer Prime. The computer tablet looks like an iPad 2 but it also connects to an optional keyboard dock which transforms it into a laptop. With high marks from reviewers for aesthetics, design, connections and the keyboard dock, tech blogs across the internet were excited about the implications of this new device.
"To put it simply, the ASUS Transformer Prime is easily the best Android tablet and is possibly the best tablet, period Others agreed with Nguyen's assessment. "The Asus Transformer Prime is the best full-featured Android tablet yet, with a sexy design, thoughtful features, and an impressive camera," wrote CNET.
"ASUS Transformer Prime reviews have been flooding the internets this evening (spoiler: everyone loves it) and with that has come an official release date and promo video for the supertablet," wrote Chris Chavez at Phandroid. "For weeks we geeks, early adopters and people who love their tech toys have been awaiting this, and none too patiently," wrote Engadget. Politics The ongoing health care debate and the 2012 presidential elections were the fourth and fifth biggest stories respectively on blogs last week. A new rule for insurance companies that was part of the Affordable Care Act went into effect the first week of December, and an article about it in Forbes had bloggers talking. The provision, called the medical loss ratio, requires health insurance companies to spend a certain percentage of the premium dollars they collect from consumers on actual medical care as opposed to overhead costs or marketing expenses. On December 2nd, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the rules about which insurer expenditures will qualify as a medical expense. Among other things, the author of the Forbes piece, Rick Ungar, declared that the rule would have a major and adverse impact on the for-profit health insurance industry as currently constituted. Responses to the story came from both sides of the political aisle. From a liberal: "Of course, what they don't acknowledge is the number of Americans that would also die as a result of a lack of access to health coverage," wrote karoli at Crooks and Liars, "I guess those people are right on par with Bin Laden in the eyes of the right." And a conservative: "So yes, a bomb has gone off. Will it destroy the private insurance market? Unlikely. But you can be sure that insurance costs will explode," wrote the College Republican National Committee. Despite its prominence in the blogosphere, Obama's health care reform bill was not a major story in the mainstream news last week, but a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press confirms it is something Americans strongly care about. The survey asked people to rank the most important issues to them for the 2012 presidential election and health care ranked third, behind only jobs and the budget deficit. Other political news had bloggers talking, too. In fifth place was Herman Cain's suspension of his presidential campaign and Donald Trump's plans to moderate a Republican debate-before his December 12 announcement that he no longer had plans to moderate. In third place for the week was holiday crafting techniques to make Christmas tags.
The conversation on Twitter last week was dominated by teen crooners: The always popular Justin Bieber and the boy band One Direction. "The Biebs" came in first place with a new music video for Santa Claus is Coming to Town. His prank on a radio receptionist was also frequently retweeted, as was a tweet from him thanking a fan for some art work. While most of the Bieber tweeters are fans, there are always a few haters. "This is so bad we think our ears just went blind-if that's even possible. Justin Bieber's Santa Claus is Coming to Town..." wrote not nerdabout. While not at the same level as Bieber Fever, another group of teen dreams are getting some attention on Twitter, too. One Direction, a British-Irish boy band that finished third on the reality talent show X Factor registered as the No. 3 Twitter topic with two videos, one of an acoustic version of their song, One Thing. Fans of the group were pleased with the rendition. "I've been fangirling so hard on One Direction- One Thing Acoustic. <3" wrote Harry1D. "One Direction -One Thing Acoustic Video is FLAWLESS" wrote Maya Stylinson. Twitter itself was the No. 2 story last week, with news of the site's redesign, to make it more intuitive and easier to use. One tweeter accurately predicted the response among some users. "Among other things, the upcoming Twitter redesign means that we can look forward to people complaining about the upcoming Twitter redesign," said AMP Agency. "Day 2 and I'm still caremad about the latest Twitter redesign. Feels like it was built by product managers for marketers. Soulless," wrote Alex Payne. "Dear Nerds, You are not a normal. For better or worse, the Twitter redesign *is* for normals. This should answer all your questions," wrote BJ Clark. The fourth most-discussed story on Twitter for the week was about the rape and murder of a seven year-old-girl. Several Twitter users implored their followers to retweet messages about her death to show they cared. Wrapping up the five top Twitter stories for the week was a link to the nine funniest texts from the blog Damn You Auto Correct, which shows humorous text messages that were auto-corrected to say something funny. Be warned that some of this content is not safe for work. Twitter users thought the texts were hilarious. "I'm still wiping away my tears from laughing so hard," wrote miriella. "I rarely say it, but ROTFLMAO applies," tweeted Holly Bemiss. This author's personal favorite of the typos was this exchange between a man and his brother. YouTube International news dominated YouTube last week, due in part to a high-profile gaffe by Enrique Peña Nieto, the leading contender for the 2012 Mexican presidential elections. The No. 1 news video showed the former state governor floundering for about four minutes at the Guadalajara International Book Fair on December 3rd, when he was asked to name three books that had influenced his life. He was not able to correctly name a book besides the Bible and confused the names of two well-known Mexican authors. The politician was attending the fair to promote his new book Mexico, the Great Hope. Peña Nieto's flub was also lampooned using a popular internet meme that involves tweaking a scene from a 2004 movie about Adolph Hitler to make it appear as if the Nazi leader is angrily ranting about a current event. The No. 2 YouTube video last week featured the clip from the film with Spanish subtitles of Hitler sputtering profanities after learning of Peña Nieto's gaffe.
Above: An U.S. Army soldier high fives an Afghan boy during a patrol in Pul-e Alam, a town in Logar province, eastern Afghanistan. (Reuters / Umit Bektas) About the New Media Index The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the news agenda of social media, with a focus on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms are an important part of today's news information narrative and shape the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of 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. Through this New Media Index PEJ aims to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compares with the narrative in the traditional press. A detailed description of the NMI methodology, which was modified in August 2011, is available here. *For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from online postings. For this week's report, Twitter results were only from Tweetmeme as Twitterly was down. By Emily Guskin and Sovini Tan, PEJ
The latest GOP frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, has now been become the top campaign newsmaker after weeks of attention to Herman Cain and allegations about his personal behavior. The 2012 presidential campaign once again topped the news agenda, accounting for 24% of the newshole during the week of December 5-11, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was only slightly higher than the previous week’s level of 23%. The focus of that coverage was squarely on Gingrich, the former House speaker who has quickly risen to the top of the polls. He was a dominant newsmaker in 47% of all campaign stories studied last week, nearly twice as prevalent the next biggest newsmaker, Mitt Romney. (To register as a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) The coverage, which was heaviest on radio news (42% of airtime studied) and cable news (39%)—the two sectors that include the ideological talk shows—largely examined his dramatic rise in those polls, but also raised questions about his temperament and record. Nearly one-third of last week’s coverage of the economy—the No. 2 story at 14%—focused on President Barack Obama’s highly publicized Kansas speech in which he advocated policies to help the middle class. Among the issues raised in the speech was the impending expiration of the payroll tax cuts. The debate in Washington over how to pay for the tax cuts has broken down along the typical partisan lines of spending reductions versus taxing the wealthy. The cable and radio talk shows reflected that divide last week. At No. 3 last week was the European debt crisis, which accounted for 9% of the newshole and was the No. 1 story in the newspaper sector—where it accounted for 13% of the front-page coverage. Concerns about default by the more vulnerable countries in the European Union were momentarily alleviated when a plan was adopted to penalize those nations and instill discipline on the eurozone. U.S. relations with Iran were in the news last week after an American drone was reported to have fallen into the hands of that country. That subject accounted for 3% of the newshole last week and was the No. 4 story. It marked the first time since October 10-16 that Iran ranked among the top five stories in a given week. Also accounting for 3% of the newshole was the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, where last week a suicide bomber killed approximately 60 Shiite pilgrims in Kabul. Graphic images of the aftermath were displayed on the front page of The New York Times and several other major newspapers around the country on December 6. Spotlight on Gingrich The campaign narrative last week was clearly focused on the rise of Newt Gingrich and the impact on Mitt Romney’s campaign. A surge that had Gingrich leading Romney by double digits in some polls reinforced the idea that this was the former speaker’s moment. “Newt Gingrich, all but forgotten in the presidential race until just a couple short weeks ago, has stepped on the gas, blown right past Mitt Romney,” said CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on December 7, referring to a Gallup poll showing Gingrich leading Romney by 15 points. “It’s as if Newt Gingrich claimed Herman Cain’s supporters lock, stock and barrel.” Cain suspended his campaign on December 3.
When it came to Gingrich’s past, the media had plenty to report on last week, including House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s threat to bring past ethics violations against Gingrich to light. “Part of Gingrich’s challenge is showing that he has grown since his more bombastic days in Congress, when he engineered the 1994 Republican takeover of the House but left office as a deeply unpopular figure,” reported The New York Times on December 5. But even his personal background, including several marriages and known infidelity, could play well with voters seeking an authentic candidate, said the Times story. The week also brought with it a deeper focus ahead on the Iowa caucuses, which take place on January 3 and mark the opening bell of nominating contests around the country.
NPR’s Cokie Roberts noted that while a high proportion of Iowa’s voters are evangelical Christians, they have not flocked to Romney. Romney’s Mormon faith, according to some polls, is possibly a deterrent to some religious conservatives. “Republicans in Iowa, just like the rest of the country, have really been looking for someone other than Romney, so what they do will count,” said Roberts on December 5. She noted that those Iowa Republicans seem to be flocking to Gingrich, especially after the suspension of Cain’s campaign. The Rest of the Week’s News On Tuesday, December 6, Barack Obama delivered an economic speech in Osawatomie, Kan., arguing for fairer policies to protect the middle class and challenging claims that he is engaging in class warfare. The speech, combined with the broader debate about taxes, accounted for more than half of all economic coverage last week, the No. 2 story. The speech drew some strong reactions from commentators in the media, including Sean Hannity, who on his December 7 Fox News Channel program remarked that “President Barack Obama put his divisive, class-warfare rhetoric on full display yesterday during an economic event in Kansas.” But on The Huffington Post on December 6, former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich called it “the most important economic speech of [Obama’s] presidency.” The debate about tax policy hinges on the payroll tax cut, which Democrats are trying to extend after it is set to expire in January. One of the storylines that emerged last week is that the issue has caused some divisions among Republicans, as The Los Angeles Times explained on December 9: “Typically it's the GOP that operates from a singular playbook, particularly on tax policy: Republicans want lower taxes, while Democrats tend to hold a variety of positions when it comes to taxes and economic issues. But the payroll tax debate has left congressional Republicans arguing among themselves.” The No. 3 story, the European debt crisis, was focused early in the week around reports that the ratings firm of Standard & Poor’s had placed 15 out of 17 key eurozone nations on downgrade warning as the crisis continued to deepen. Yet later in the week, new reports of some progress in the region boosted stocks and resulted in more hopeful assessments. News reports on December 9 told of an agreement that had been worked out among 23 European leaders, many from countries that use the Euro, to set caps on government spending and borrowing. While the agreement was hailed, “the failure to win full approval from all E.U. nations appeared to be a political blow to European unity,” according to The Washington Post. Most of last week’s coverage of Iran, the No. 4 story, was triggered by a video showing a U.S. drone that Iran said it had captured. Another video showing Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who was has been in captivity in Iran for five years, was made available to the public by the U.S. government and attracted significant airtime. An unusual act of sectarian violence drew media attention to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, the No. 5 story last week. The attack, reportedly by a militant Pakistani Sunni group, killed approximately 60 Shiites in Kabul on December 6. Some of the coverage examined whether the incident marked a new and more dangerous turn in religious violence in that war-torn country.
Newsmakers of the Week Among the top newsmakers last week were the two leading GOP presidential contenders, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Gingrich was the No. 1 newsmaker, a dominant figure in 10% of all stories studied last week. Romney was No. 3, a dominant figure in 5%. (The previous week, Gingrich and Romney had been the No. 2 and No. 4 newsmakers respectively, registering as dominant figures in 6% and 5% of that week’s stories.) At No. 2 was Barack Obama, himself a candidate for reelection, and much of his media attention last week stemmed from his Kansas speech in which he evoked the rhetoric of Teddy Roosevelt and laid out a vigorous defense of the middle class and certain Democratic economic policies. He was the key figure in 9% of stories, up from 6% the week before. At No. 4 was Donald Trump (3%), who had earlier contemplated seeking the GOP nomination, who made news last week for his planned Republican debate that is to be held in Iowa on December 27. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman have all declined to attend the Trump debate. Finally, the No. 5 newsmaker last week was former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky (3%), who was arrested a second time on new charges of sexually abusing young boys. He has been among the top five lead newsmakers in two of the last three weeks. About the NCI PEJ’s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,000 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on "newshole," or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV. (See Our Methodology.) In addition, these reports also include a rundown of the week’s leading newsmakers, a designation given to people who account for at least 50% of a given story. Jesse Holcomb of PEJ
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A change for a major search engine that ensnared three of the titans of social media generated an intense discussion on blogs last week, as bloggers debated such fundamental online issues as privacy, monopolies and the access to information. 
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Some political reporters noted that few would have expected such a comeback from Gingrich, whose campaign was nearly written off months before, after weak poll numbers and staff defections. Referring to Romney’s campaign on the December 8 Early Show, CBS’s Jan Crawford noted that “They expected a serious challenger, they did not expect it to be Newt Gingrich, and you know what—who did? His campaign was written off for dead six months ago.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, on her December 7 program, suggested that the GOP campaign had reached a new stage. “With less than a month to go before voting in the Iowa caucuses, on a night like this in Washington, the Republican field is starting to appear settled.”
