Project for Excellence in Journalism

Election Blogging

October 14, 2010

The top stories in the blogosphere are often an eclectic mix of topics from technology and pop culture to science and war. But last week, with the 2010 midterm elections looming, each of the top five subjects focused on the election or a closely related subject -- the economic issues helping define the campaign.

For the week of Oct. 4-8, two of the top five stories on blogs were connected directly to the election according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Last week, 17% of the links in blogs highlighted two stories about the 2010 campaign. One was an Oct. 4 Washington Post piece about interest groups spending far more in this election cycle than in the 2008 campaign. The other was an Oct. 5 Washington Post story about how the political landscape remains strongly tilted toward Republicans.

Another 11% of the links concerned a major force in the 2010 political landscape -- the Tea Party movement. The debate was generated by Sen. Sherrod Brown's (D-OH) op-ed in the Oct. 3 USA Today arguing that Tea Party populism is driven by anger at the government and divides the country, and is therefore not real populism, which fights for all Americans.

Together, these election-related stories accounted for 28% of the linked-to news story on blogs.

Three other subjects that engaged bloggers last week focused on economics with a political twist.

The No. 2 topic, with 12% of links, was triggered by a Los Angeles Times story about how more than $69 million in California welfare money was spent outside the state in recent years, including in Las Vegas, Hawaii and on cruise ships. That was followed closely (11%) by the revelations in an Oct. 6 USA Today article that $162 million in stimulus spending was not disclosed by the government.

The fifth-biggest subject last week was an Oct. 6 Washington Post column by Steven Pearlstein in which he argued that Republicans had chosen to ignore the idea that income inequality exists in the country in their "Pledge to America."

Bloggers on both the left and right weighed in on these subjects, with many critical of the opposing party. Liberals drove the conversation about interest group spending while conservatives were a stronger voice in the discussion of welfare abuse and unreported stimulus spending. Both sides entered the fray over Brown's criticism of the tea parties.

Continue reading the full report at journalism.org.

_{*For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings.}