Project for Excellence in Journalism

Campaign 2012 and the Media

The Storyline Heading into South Carolina

January 18, 2012

After winning the first two nominating contests, Mitt Romney is getting more negative news coverage heading into Saturday's South Carolina primary than he has at any time so far in the GOP race.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul, the Libertarian described in many press accounts as having little chance of winning the nomination, is enjoying the most positive coverage of any candidate.

Rick Santorum received virtually no boost from nearly winning in Iowa on January 3. His coverage was actually much better the two weeks before the caucuses.

These are some of the findings of a first edition of what will be an ongoing analysis of election news by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism called Campaign 2012 in the Media. The new work will track the volume and tone of press coverage for each candidate, the volume and tone of the conversation in Twitter and analyze data from other sources such as Google's new election tool.

Read the full report and see these special features on our Campaign 2012 in the Media page:

• Tone of news coverage
• Volume of news coverage
• Tone on Twitter
• Volume on Twitter
• Tools to track political coverage
• Stories on how the media is covering the campaign