PEJ New Media Index: For Bloggers It's the Two E's — Election and Economy

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PEJ New Media Index: For Bloggers It's the Two E's — Election and Economy

The top stories in the blogosphere are often an eclectic mix of topics from technology and pop culture to science and war. But last week, with the 2010 midterm elections looming, each of the top five subjects focused on the election or a closely related subject-the economic issues helping define the campaign.

For the week of October 4-8, two of the top five stories on blogs were connected directly to the election according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Last week, 17% of the links in blogs highlighted two stories about the 2010 campaign.  One was an October 4 Washington Post piece about interest groups spending far more in this election cycle than in the 2008 campaign. The other was an October 5 Post story about how the political landscape remains strongly tilted toward Republicans.

Another 11% of the links concerned a major force in the 2010 political landscape-the tea parties. The debate was generated by Senator Sherrod Brown's (D-OH) op-ed in the October 3 USA Today arguing that tea party populism is driven by anger at the government and divides the country, and is therefore not real populism, which fights for all Americans.

Together, these election-related stories accounted for 28% of the linked-to news story on blogs.

Read the full report, For Bloggers It's the Two E's — Election and Economy on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site.

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