PEJ: Twitter, blogs harsher on candidates than mainstream news

December 09, 2011

PEJ: Twitter, blogs harsher on candidates than mainstream news

With the U.S. presidential election less than a year away, people are talking about the candidates. However, the tone of these discussions varies considerably by venue. Recent research by Pew’s Project on Excellence in Journalism compared the tone of candidate-related posts on Twitter, blogs, and the mainstream news—and found that mainstream news tended to be more neutral and less harsh…

A few highlights from PEJ’s findings:

“The candidate conversation on Twitter is tremendously active. Indeed the number of statements about candidates on Twitter vastly outnumber those offered in blogs by a factor of more than 9 to 1.”
“Congressman Ron Paul has enjoyed the most favorable tone on Twitter of all candidates examined. ...Paul is also the most favorably discussed candidate in blogs. While he trails significantly in the polls, and has received less coverage than every Republican candidate except Rick Santorum from news outlets, Paul seems to have struck a chord with some cohort in social media.”
“In the blogosphere, since May only one candidate other than Ron Paul-Cain-has received more positive than negative coverage, and that by the razor thin margin (32% positive and 30% negative). The most discussed GOP contender in the blogosphere has been Romney, but the tone has been mixed, with 33% of the conversation positive and 35% negative. Yet that is a much better result than Romney has had in Twitter.”

But PEJ also notes:

“Neither Twitter nor blogs function in general as a form of vox populi that either reflects or anticipates changes in public mood as expressed in representative samples of the population in polling. Sometimes these social media move with polls, but often they do not.”

Today, media is practically defined by fragmentation and personalization. People choose where they get and discuss political news based on their own tastes and the people they know (or choose to listen to).

Some people’s daily media diet of news and discourse may include a great deal of political content; others, almost none. Some people seek out a wide range of political views, information, and topics; most probably stick to a more narrow range.

A bird’s-eye view of the overall tone of political discourse or coverage across three huge and intensely variable types of media might be very useful indeed to campaign strategists. But what about for media consumers, or even news organizations? Given how people really use media these days, it’s questionable whether this research indicates anything about how people experience that content, and how it affects them—and how it might influence elections.

The News for Digital Journalists blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.