PEJ New Media Index: State of the iPad Outpaces State of the Union

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PEJ New Media Index: State of the iPad Outpaces State of the Union

Technology and offbeat science experiments are subjects that frequently draw interest in the world of social media. And after two consecutive weeks of focusing heavily on the tragedy in Haiti, social media returned last week to this familiar territory-even giving it precedence over the State of the Union Address.

The rollout of Apple's new iPad was the No. 1 topic on Twitter, generating 18% of the news links from January 25-29, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The iPad was also the fifth-biggest topic on blogs (7% of the links) in a week when the No. 1 story in the blogosphere (23%) was the BBC airing of the first-ever film shot entirely by chimpanzees.

President Obama's State of the Union Address, on the other hand, which led in the mainstream press last week according to PEJ's News Coverage Index, carried much less weight in social media. On Twitter it got less than half the attention as the iPad-ranking 5th at just 8%. And the speech did not even make it into the top five stories in the blogosphere.

Read the full article State of the iPad Outpaces State of the Union on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.

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