Project for Excellence in Journalism

Bloggers Follow Events in Tucson

January 20, 2011

The Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson that killed six and severely injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords drew more attention in the blogosphere than any subject in the past eight months.

From Jan. 10-14, the tragic event received 57% of the news links on blogs, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. (In a clear indication of the international flavor of blogging, the last time a subject attracted more interest was May 10-14, 2010, when the United Kingdom elections generated 61% of the links.)

The shooting story was also a major event in the mainstream media last week, where it filled a whopping 57% of the newshole.

Earlier this week, PEJ produced a detailed look at both the mainstream media coverage of the event as well as the subjects and tone of the discussion on blogs and Twitter. To help examine the conversation about the shootings in social media, that report employed Crimson Hexagon, a technology that analyzes online media by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics.

Among the key findings:

• The leading subject of the online conversation about the Tucson tragedy was the role of political rhetoric and its relationship to the event, making up 29% of the conversation.
• Fully 59% of that commentary involved liberals criticizing conservatives for the tone of political discourse compared with 28% that involved conservatives criticizing the left or defending themselves.
• Sarah Palin had a tough week as the online discussion of her was far more negative than positive -- by a margin of almost three-to-one. Part of that criticism was related to Palin's Jan. 12 video in which she accused her critics of a "blood libel."
• The subject of gun control was largely absent from the social media conversation about the shootings, accounting for only 4%.

Read more about the other top stories on blogs and twitter in the full report at journalism.org.