Pew Research Looks at the November 2nd Election 'Media Conversation'

Link to November 8 Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism post, "Parsing Election Day Media. How the Midterms Message Varied by Platform".

Excerpt: No single unifying 2010 election-day message reverberated through the news ecosystem -- even with results as decisive as those on November 2. Rather, the media conversation was more diffuse than it might have been in a simpler, more homogenized, media era and it varied substantially depending on what media one looked at.

These are among the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism of election coverage on four distinct media platforms, produced in conjunction with social media analysis technology from Crimson Hexagon. A basic narrative of historic Republican gains and the voters' rebuke to Democrats certainly gained traction in the press. To some extent, however, that GOP romp theme was balanced by projections about future politics and policy debates, a focus on the electoral process itself, and grassroots calls to action.

To some degree, different sectors performed differing functions: Newspapers, particularly on their front pages, offered synthesis and unified verdicts (GOP triumph). Television leaned more toward speculation and differing narratives (coming from talking heads). Blogs offered more ideologically oriented commentary and scrutiny of the process, while Twitter functioned largely as a clarion call to citizen activism and participation.

The findings also offer significant evidence that social media aren't necessarily derivative of and dependent on the mainstream media. In this case, bloggers and Twitterers clearly went their own way, focusing on elements of the election that were largely missing in the mainstream narrative.