So says a new study examining traditional news and blog coverage of the 2008 presidential election. Researchers at Cornell used computer algorithms to identify, track, and pinpoint the origin of repeated phrases on 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs.
While a small subset of blogs such as Hot Air and Talking Points Memo generated internet widespread memes, most blogs lagged behind mainstream media by about 2.5 hours.
With Twitter getting all the credit for breaking the news of Michael Jackson’s death, it’s nice to see mainstream media getting its due.
Read the complete paper, and New York Times coverage of the study, here: “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle,” by Jure Leskovec, Lars Backstrom, and Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
“Study Measures the Chatter of the News Cycle” The New York Times, July 12, 2009