The Israeli attack on supply ships heading for Gaza on May 31 sparked a lot of heated discussions – and lead to serious diplomatic tensions between Israel and Turkey, once one of its very few supporters in the ‘Islamic world’ . Like many other outer events, this tragedy caused also an enormous echo among political bloggers. At least according to a study conducted by the well-known PEW Research Center’s for Excellence in Journalism. In the context of its regularly published New Media Index, the researchers compared the top stories among bloggers – and they found out that the Gaza incident dominates the (US) blogosphere.
The index also lists top stories in the traditional mass media. US broadcasters and newspapers are thereby mainly focusing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the international incident far behind on a second rank. The study provides a ranking of top stories in the so-called twitterverse, too. The attached bar chart shows that sports (football in particular) and the controversial decisions by US mobile phone provider AT&T are the most important stories shared via twitter.
Find the study on this issue on here on journalism.org. The research mechanisms behind the index are explained at the bottom.
Dennis Nguyen 