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Project for Excellence in Journalism
Blogs and Twitter Focus on Michele Bachmann
Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party favorite who formally announced her presidential candidacy on June 27, created a major buzz in social media last week, registering as the dominant subject on blogs as well as a hot topic on Twitter. Most of the commentary was highly critical.
From June 26 to July 1, fully one-third (33%) of the news links on blogs were about Bachmann, making her the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. And in a rare case of the same subject interesting both bloggers and Tweeters, the Minnesota congresswoman was the No. 5 story on Twitter.
Bachmann was also a major newsmaker in the mainstream press last week, where much of the coverage discussed her emergence as a significant force in the GOP field. But bloggers and Twitter users eschewed that horserace angle and instead largely criticized her for what they saw as gaffes and hypocrisy.
The two main storylines that grabbed the attention of bloggers were Bachmann receiving government aid despite her condemnation of government handouts and the candidate's confusion of John Wayne, the actor, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.
Other stories that were popular on blogs for the week included a piece about San Francisco weighing the decision to ban the sale of pets in second place (17%). An article critical of former Vice President Al Gore's failure to advance the green movement was in third, at 14%.
Wrapping up the top five stories on blogs were two economic topics. The fourth-biggest was about California Democrats passing an austerity budget for the state (12%). The No. 5 story was about austerity measures in financially troubled Greece and public workers on strike in the UK (10%).
On Twitter, the new Google+ social networking tool took top billing, followed by global warming and stories about a British government hacking of al Qaeda's website.
Learn more about these stories by reading the full report at journalism.org.