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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Japan Crisis Overtakes Social Media
For only the second time since PEJ began measuring social media in January 2009, the same story was the No. 1 topic on blogs, Twitter and YouTube.
Social media users last week responded in huge numbers to the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, including the growing concern about damaged nuclear reactors. For the week of March 14-18, a full 64% of blog links, 32% of Twitter news links and the top 20 YouTube news videos were about that subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The only other time that one topic led the news on blogs, Twitter and YouTube was June 15-19, 2009, when unrest following the disputed elections in Iran- -- also known as the "Twitter Revolution" -- was the No. 1 story.
While all three social media platforms focused on the earthquake last week, each performed distinct functions. The blogosphere offered a place to release and share emotional responses to the disaster and calls for support for the Japanese people. Twitter became a place to seek out and share breaking news as users retweeted stories from news sources. YouTube, the visual medium, captured the astonishing visceral power of tsunami waves that destroyed virtually everything in their path.
In discussing the repercussions of the earthquake many bloggers shared optimism that Japan would recover from the disaster and asked their readers to think of those in that country. Others expressed shock at the magnitude of the disaster (or disasters) that struck the island nation. And some noted how modern media coverage can bring the horror of such events to everyone across the planet -- the shrinking of the global village.
Those on Twitter devoted more attention to news as it happened than to the broader picture, many of them focusing on the changing conditions at the crippled Fukushima plant.
Continue reading the full report, including excerpts from bloggers and Twitter users writing about Japan, at journalism.org.