Project for Excellence in Journalism

New Congress, Same Divisions Online

January 13, 2011

Echoing the mainstream press, the blogosphere last week focused its attention on the new Congress sworn in on Jan. 5. And perhaps not surprisingly, liberal and conservative bloggers had strongly divergent views about a House of Representatives under Republican control.

For the week of Jan. 3-7, fully 32% of the news links on blogs were about the 112th Congress, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The same subject was also the leading topic in the traditional press last week.

The time period covered by this NMI report ended on Jan. 7, a day before the shootings in Arizona that killed six people and left Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition. That event, as it did in the mainstream press, consumed the online community almost immediately after it happened. For a chronology of the media's initial reporting on that event, click here.

For the week ending Jan. 7, an eclectic mix of stories generated attention in the blogosphere, including two Beltway political stories, two involving the entertainment industry and another that some people were calling, half-jokingly, a possible sign of the apocalypse.

The discussion about the new Congress largely followed party lines. Conservatives cheered the decision by Republicans to read the Constitution on the House floor and were hopeful about the party's plan to undo some of Obama's agenda.

Liberals focused on plans by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to spend much of the next two years investigating the Obama White House -- an administration he called "one of the most corrupt." They saw that claim as absurd and argued that the plan to spend so much time investigating the White House showed that Republicans were not much interested in governing.

The No. 2 subject in blogs last week was the death of actress Anne Francis, who starred in movies and on television in the 1950's and 60's. Bloggers largely remembered her as the sultry TV detective Honey West, while sharing videos and pictures of her in that role. This continues a trend on blogs when the passing of Hollywood icons, such as Leslie Nielsen a month ago, often generates substantial attention and nostalgia.

An audio interview on the BBC with openly gay actor Rupert Everett about the problems that homosexuals face in the film industry was third at 10%.

Fourth (at 9%) was the news that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was leaving his job as spokesman to help direct Obama's re-election campaign. This subject also generated attention in the mainstream media last week as part of a series of changes in White House staffing.

And a CNN report about a mysterious event on New Year's Eve when thousands of red-winged blackbirds fell dead in an Arkansas town was fourth at 7%. The precise cause of the mass kill is unknown, although experts suggest that fireworks or weather caused large-scale trauma which led to the deaths. A number of bloggers contemplated the possible causes while others implied, often sarcastically, that this was a sign of the apocalypse.

On Twitter, the pattern of technology stories, and most notably a fascination with Apple, dominated the news agenda last week.

For the second week in a row, stories about Apple led on the popular social networking service (with 20% of the links). The majority of the attention was focused on reports that the company had surpassed $300 billion in value, making it the second-largest company in the world behind only Exxon.

A column on TechCrunch predicting seven new technologies that will "rock" in 2011 was second, at 10%. Included in the predictions are the growth of web videos on television and the expanded use of mobile wallets.

Twitter was the third largest subject (at 6%). The attention was split between two stories. One was the unveiling of a complicated equation that would rank accounts by the number of followers. The other was a story about the rapid growth of an unusual hashtag, #LessAmbitiousMovies, a meme that encourages tweeters to tweak the titles of popular films to make them seem less ambitious in scope. Examples included "Prancing with Wolves," and "The Goddaughter."

The announcement that Skype has acquired the video streaming service Qik for approximately $100 million was No. 4, at 6%.

And stories about the rapid growth of the web site Quora, a social networking site that describes itself as "a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it," were fifth, also at 6%.

Continue reading the full report at journalism.org.