News Content Analysis

MSNBC president Phil Griffin generated plenty of media attention this week when he said, in a New York Times interview, that his channel was “not the place” for breaking news. “Our brand is not that.” Griffin was responding to a significant decline in MSNBC’s ratings, which the Times reported was down 18% in prime time […]

Overview As Oklahoma recovers from severe damage caused by last week’s tornado, a majority of Americans (59%) say federal spending in response to natural disasters is emergency aid that does not need to be offset by cuts to other programs, while 29% say such spending must be offset by cuts to other programs. While there […]

Overview The public paid limited attention to last week’s congressional hearings on Benghazi. Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified. Last October, 61% said they were following the early stages of the investigation at least fairly closely. […]

The Twitter debate about gun control has taken many twists and turns since the Newtown killings, according to a new Pew Research Report that looks at the mainstream coverage and social media conversation on that issue. Which terms did the media most often invoke when discussing gun control? And how big a factor was President Obama in driving the narrative about it?

Overview As Congress returns to Washington to resume work on gun control and immigration legislation, the public is paying far closer attention to news about the gun control debate than news about the debate over immigration policy. A national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted April 4-7 among 1,003 adults, finds 37% say they […]

The news programs that Americans watch on national cable channels and their local television stations have changed significantly in recent years while the network evening newscasts have remained remarkably stable, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

https://legacy.pewresearch.org/journalism/2012/12/20/social-media-and-opinion-pages-newtown-sparks-calls-gun-reform/ This special report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism on media reaction to the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut uses data derived from four different methodologies. Data regarding the tone of conversation on social media (Twitter and blogs) were derived with a combination of PEJ’s traditional media research methods, based on […]

Here’s a look at the public’s top 15 news stories of 2012, according to Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index.

The public’s news interests were very much focused on domestic developments this year, with the election outcome, last week’s horrific school shooting and Hurricane Sandy leading the list of the top stories of 2012. With the exception of the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya in September, which became a bitterly debated campaign issue, […]

Gun control was an immediate focus of the conversation on social media and in the opinion pages of newspapers following the shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a special PEJ report. How does the response to this tragedy compare with other shootings? How did coverage in opinion pieces differ than the social media conversation? The report offers answers.