During what may prove a key period in the race for president, the candidates received very different treatment on Twitter, Facebook and blogs than in the mainstream media, a new PEJ study finds. The candidates each enjoyed a bounce in mainstream media treatment during their conventions. By contrast, social media showed little change, and the discourse was highly negative.

Depending on the local news topic, urban residents are more likely to use mobile and online sources, while suburbanites are most heavily into social media and rural residents are more inclined to word of mouth sources. A joint PEJ-Pew Internet report offers more about how people get local news in specific communities.

On the eve of the conventions, Barack Obama holds a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney in the way his campaign is using digital technology to communicate directly with voters. The Obama campaign is posting almost four times as much content and is active on nearly twice as many platforms, according to a new study analyzing the content and volume of candidate communications on their websites and social media channels.

The conversation on Twitter about the Penn State scandal has shifted focus over the last month from the man convicted of sexual abuse to the school and then to the NCAA. But one constant in the conversation has not budged—views of Joe Paterno.

News is becoming a major part of what Americans watch on YouTube. In the last 15 months, a third of the most searched terms on the video sharing site were news related. A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism explores the character of news on YouTube.

Users of Twitter, Facebook and blogs weighed in heavily on the Supreme Court Health Care ruling last week. PEJ examines the sentiment on each of the three social media platforms, how that sentiment shifted in the days that followed the ruling and the degree to which users delved into implications for the presidential contenders.

Reports that News Corp is spinning off the publishing division cap a year of major changes in news industry ownership. It was the busiest time for newspaper sales since 2007 and witnessed the single largest local TV acquisition in four years. Visit PEJ’s interactive database, to explore financial statistics on more than 4,000 radio and TV stations, newspapers and news websites.

PEJ examines how the health care debate was presented in the press, which party won the messaging war and how the bill has largely disappeared from view.

The Facebook IPO was a hot topic on blogs, Twitter and Facebook last week with doubts about the stock’s value exceeding bullishness on the investment.  And the topics of conversation—which ranged from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding to co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s citizenship—varied by social media platform.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ended his presidential campaign with a final week of unflattering and relatively sparse coverage and Mitt Romney's campaign narrative appeared to benefit from some high profile endorsements.