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Steve Jobs dominated the news—what you may have missed

An analysis shows that different news domimnates the on- and offline worlds.

 

Justin Franz

IRL

Posted on Oct 17, 2011   Updated on Jun 3, 2021, 2:07 am CDT

The death of Steve Jobs rocked the world of Twitter, while traditional news media focused on the economy, President Barack Obama and Amanda Knox.

The economy and the 2012 presidential election were the top stories last week, attracting 22 and 18 percent of news coverage respectively, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism weekly news analysis. When broken down to single news makers, Obama and Knox, the Seattle women released from an Italian jail last week, were the top players.

But it was a different story on Twitter, according to statistics on Topsy.com.

Jobs, who died on Oct. 5, dominated Twitter feeds. On the day Jobs died, there were 1,563,233 tweets that referenced the Apple creator. On the same day, 26,812 tweets referred to Knox and only 4,811 mentioned President Obama. Jobs-dominated tweets continued throughout the week, and even on Sunday afternoon the number of Tweets regardomg the former head of Apple far out numbered Obama. Knox had all but fallen out of relevance.

Photo  by Bobbie

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*First Published: Oct 17, 2011, 4:17 pm CDT