PEJ New Media Index: California's Budget Propositions Lead a Diverse Online Conversation

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PEJ New Media Index: California's Budget Propositions Lead a Diverse Online Conversation

The widely diverse interests of social media shone through last week, as a mix of topics-the fiscal mess in California, the murder of a rapper, an ancient creature, and a virtual strip search-all shared in the conversation.

From May 18-22, the No. 1 story in social media was the California financial crisis and the voters' rejection of ballot initiatives designed to deal with the problem. That subject generated 17% of the week's links, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Conservative bloggers in particular honed in on the subject, claiming the votes were a rejection of higher taxes and bigger government-and a message to politicians throughout the country.

PEJ's New Media Index typically utilizes data collected from two different Web tracking sites, Icerocket and Technorati. However, Technorati has been having technical problems so this week's NMI is based solely on daily figures from Icerocket.

Read the full report California's Budget Propositions Lead a Diverse Online Conversation on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.

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