The Pew Research Centre’s New Media Index is publishing some interesting data on the differences between social media, including blogs, and mainstream media outlets in the USA.
The New Media Index monitors and analyses the content on more than 100 million blogs and other social media web pages concerned with national news and public affairs, then compares the results to the stories in mainstream media.
The results vary from week to week, but seem to suggest that social media covers a wider range of topics, focusses less on “winner-loser” coverage. Sometimes topics of interest only to niche audiences nevertheless build up a head of steam because of the intensity of interest within that group.
