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<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\nThe aftermath of the January 8 shooting spree in Tucson dominated the American news media last week in a way events rarely do: the tragedy registered as the third-biggest story in a single week since PEJ began tracking coverage in January 2007. <\/p>\n\n
From January10-16, the rampage that killed six and badly wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords accounted for 57% of the news coverage studied by the Pew Research Center\u2019s Project for Excellence in Journalism. In the past four years, only two stories\u2014both about the 2008 election\u2014generated more attention. The first was the nomination of Barack Obama and John McCain\u2019s surprise selection of running mate Sarah Palin (69% from August 25-September 1). The second was the following week, September 1-7, when the Republicans held their national convention (58%). <\/p>\n\n
Aside from the sheer volume of media attention, what have the traumatic events in Tucson meant, as transmitted in the media narrative? This special report, combining PEJ\u2019s weekly News Coverage Index with social media analysis technology from Crimson Hexagon, finds several key elements emerging. <\/p>\n\n
The Argument over Political Rhetoric was the No. 1 Storyline in the Tucson Coverage. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n The single biggest shooting-related topic involved a discussion of the tenor of political discourse in America, including its role as a potential catalyst for the tragedy. That theme proved to be the biggest component of the coverage both in mainstream and social media alike. <\/p>\n\n According to the PEJ\u2019s News Coverage Index, which focuses on the mainstream press, the often-heated debate about public discourse accounted for more than a quarter (27%) of all coverage devoted to the shootings last week. That was more than the coverage about the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner and his family (20%), the No. 2 Tucson storyline. And it more than doubled the coverage devoted to the third-biggest narrative, straight news accounts of the shooting and its aftermath, at 12%. <\/p>\n\n Nowhere in the mainstream media did that debate echo more loudly than on the ideological talk shows on radio and cable news. On radio, which includes commercial talk hosts, headlines and NPR, it filled 57% of the airtime devoted to the shooting. On cable, which includes prime-time and some daytime programming, it filled 32%. <\/p>\n\n Some conservative hosts accused the left of trying to smear the right by suggesting that heated political rhetoric was somehow responsible for the violence in Tucson. <\/p>\n\n As early as Monday January 10, on his prime-time Fox News show, conservative host Bill O\u2019Reilly said, \u201cOnly moments\u2026after Congresswoman Giffords was shot, some far-left loons began to spew their hatred: Conservatives encouraged Jared Loughner to pull the trigger. Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Fox News, all spurred the psychopath to kill the six people. The merchants of hate who are peddling this stuff should be accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n [some]<\/p>\n\n\n [the rhetoric]<\/p>\n\n\n The topic of political discourse was less prominent elsewhere in the media. It accounted for 21% of the online news studied concerning the shooting. And it filled 18% of the front-page newspaper coverage devoted to the shooting and 18% in network morning and evening news on the story. <\/p>\n\n But the tone of public discourse was a more significant focus of the discussion in new media. According to a Crimson Hexagon analysis that began two days earlier than the NCI data (on January 8), 29% of the conversation about the Giffords story measured on blogs and Twitter focused on public discourse. Crimson Hexagon technology analyzes online media by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. <\/p>\n\n Using Crimson Hexagon, PEJ was also able to analyze the tone of this conversation. Here, considerably more of the discussion about political rhetoric featured the left blaming the right rather than the other way around. According to the analysis from January 8-16, a full 59% of the commentary in blogs, Twitter and social media involved liberals blaming conservatives for their tone. That was more than twice the amount of the discussion\u201428%\u2014that involved conservatives criticizing the left or defending themselves. <\/p>\n\n Typical of that commentary was a tweet by someone calling himself David D: \u201cFunny, how Billy Oreillys of the world want rappers to watch their words but wanna give themselves & Sarah palin a pass.\u201d\u00a0 Another tweeter, RVAREgal wrote, \u201cThings that make me rethink free speech\u2014Palin, Limbaugh, Robertson, Beck, et al.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Though smaller in number, some conservatives did fire back. \u201cSorry, but can\u2019t let Left MSM lie, smear, frame the debate, set their memes unopposed,\u201d tweeted Barbara McMahon. <\/p>\n\n In social media, the subject of public debate was followed closely by a discussion of the shooting incident itself, the aftermath, and the media\u2019s coverage of it. That filled 27% of the social media conversation. The No. 3 topic in social media was Obama\u2019s response to the incident, including his January 12 speech and the memorial service to the victims (22%). <\/p>\n\n Obama\u2019s Speech Helped Cool the Debate over Angry Words\u2014to a Degree. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n In a January 12 speech witnessed by an estimated 30 million Americans, Barack Obama called for a change in the tone of political debate, asking citizens \u201cto listen to each other more carefully\u201d and \u201cto sharpen our instincts for empathy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n The speech, and the reaction to it, proved to be significant newsmakers. In the mainstream press, that accounted for 9% of the coverage devoted to the shooting story for the week, making it the No. 4 storyline. It was a bigger story in social media, where the president\u2019s role, his speech and the memorial service accounted for 22% of the conversation. <\/p>\n\n The address generated largely positive reviews from media pundits on the left, and perhaps more notably, from the right as well. On Fox News, columnist Charles Krauthammer showered the speech with praise, calling elements of it \u201cinspirational.\u201d Writing for the National Review online, Jim Geraghty called it a \u201cterrific speech.\u201d \u00a0Even Fox News and radio talk host Glen Beck declared that Obama gave \u201ca tremendous speech.\u201d <\/p>\n\n It will take time to determine whether the president succeeding in helping douse the heated rhetoric and fiery partisanship in Washington. At least some observers thought it had brought a temporary halt to hostilities. \u201cI think it does end the episode we\u2019ve had for the last three or four days of this rancorous, and I think, malicious debate,\u201d ventured Krauthammer. That may have been a little optimistic. <\/p>\n\n In the mainstream media, Obama\u2019s speech halted the focus on the nature of political discourse for just one day. The day following his speech, the issue of rhetoric dropped to 11% of the Tucson coverage, while attention to his speech accounted for 31%. But by the next day, January 14, the public discourse discussion had once again emerged as the top storyline (21%) while coverage of Obama\u2019s speech plunged to 3% of the newshole. <\/p>\n\n But reaction to the memorial service and president\u2019s appeal did seem to have more staying power in social media. It filled 32% of the social media conversation the day after he spoke and between 24% and 27% for the rest of the week. That was enough to push the focus on political rhetoric down from as high as 39% earlier in the week to between 24% and 28% the rest of the week. <\/p>\n\n A Tough Week for Sarah Palin in both Social and Mainstream Media <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n Almost as soon as news of the January 8 shooting surfaced, former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was drawn into the narrative. At first, that was largely by critics who blamed her\u2014and her now famous map with its crosshairs imposed over Giffords\u2019 district\u2014as contributing factors to the violence. <\/p>\n\n Palin entered the story more actively on January 12, the morning of the President\u2019s speech, when she released a video that accused her critics of a \u201cblood libel,\u201d a controversial term that invoked the anti-Semitic charge that Jews used the blood of Christian children as part of religious practice. <\/p>\n\n For the week, Palin was the fifth biggest mainstream newsmaker in the shooting coverage, registering as a dominant newsmaker in 4% of all the stories on that subject. She trailed only Loughner (25%), Giffords (19%), Obama (12%) and Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year old girl killed in the attack (5%). \u00a0(To register as a dominant newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) <\/p>\n\n And in both the mainstream media and the online conversation, much of Palin\u2019s coverage was unflattering. The Crimson Hexagon analysis shows that from January 8-16, bloggers and Twitter users were considerably more critical than supportive of her\u2014by almost a 3-1 margin. <\/p>\n\n Indeed, 58% of the social media commentary that involved Palin was negative, compared with 21% positive and 21% neutral. And a substantial portion of that was fueled by the response to her \u201cblood libel\u201d video. <\/p>\n\n [blood libel.]<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cOf course Palin is going to say something ridiculously offense like \u2018blood libel\u2019\u2014this is how she stays rich and famous,\u201d tweeted Maia Appleby. <\/p>\n\n In the mainstream press, a media narrative that was generally sympathetic to Palin\u2019s view that she had been unfairly blamed for the Tucson violence seemed to change after the video\u2019s release. <\/p>\n\n The non-partisan website Politico, which relentlessly tracks winners and losers in the political wars, declared that the video demonstrated Palin \u201chas little interest\u2014or capacity\u2014in moving beyond her brand of grievance-based politics.\u201d And conservative columnist Ross Douthat warned Palin that, \u201cYou were an actual politician once (remember that?), but you\u2019re becoming the kind of caricature that your enemies have always tried to make of you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n The Gun Control Debate Gets Little Traction <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n Amid the many storylines that emerged in the past week, one was notable mostly for its absence. While some lawmakers talked about new legislation, the issue of gun control generated only modest coverage. <\/p>\n\n In the mainstream press, the gun control storyline accounted for only 5% of all the Tucson coverage studied from January 10-16\u2014garnering about one-fifth the attention the political rhetoric issue generated. In the online media analysis, the numbers were strikingly similar. Only 4% of the conversation about the shootings on Twitter and blogs was related to gun control. <\/p>\n\n A day-by-day breakdown of both social and traditional media coverage reveals that the gun control debate never had a real spike, never exceeding 7% of the shootings newshole on any given day. <\/p>\n\n One reason may be the sense that political positions on gun control are set and there seemed little prospect of that changing because of Tucson. A January 14 story in the Connecticut newspaper, the Hour, reported on Congressman Jim Himes\u2019 concerns that \u201cthe topic has become very political with one extreme wishing to ban guns entirely and the other extreme labeling any measures to restrict gun ownership a \u2018slippery slope\u2019 toward eliminating Americans\u2019 Constitutional rights.\u201d <\/p>\n\n And last weekend on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said: “Let’s be honest here. There haven’t been the votes in the Congress for gun control. We have had some victories … But make no mistake about it: The changes are hard.” <\/p>\n\n The Rest of the Week\u2019s News <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n No other story in the mainstream media came remotely close to matching the level of coverage devoted to the Arizona shootings last week. And much of the rest of the news agenda was devoted to natural disasters and dangerous weather. <\/p>\n\n The No. 2 story, at 5% of the newshole, was the winter storm that blasted through the South and Northeast. It was followed closely by coverage of the economy, which dipped last week to 5% from 10% the previous week. The No. 4 story was the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, (4%), which hit the one-year anniversary mark last week. And the fifth-biggest story was about another natural disaster, the Australia flooding, at 3% of the newshole. <\/p>\n\n About this report <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n PEJ\u2019s weekly News Coverage Index examines the news agenda of 52 different outlets from five sectors of the media: print, online, network TV, cable and radio. (See List of Outlets<\/a>.) The weekly study, which includes some 1,000 stories, is designed to provide news consumers, journalists and researchers with hard data about what stories and topics the media are covering, the trajectories of that media narrative and differences among news platforms. The percentages are based on “newshole,” or the space devoted to each subject in print and online and time on radio and TV. (See Our Methodology<\/a>.) In addition, these reports also include a rundown of the week\u2019s leading newsmakers, a designation given to people who account for at least 50% of a given story. <\/p>\n\n For the study of Blogs and Twitter PEJ used software provided by Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon\u2019s software analyzes the conversation online from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Forums and mainstream news sources.\u00a0 According to Crimson Hexagon: \u201cOur technology analyzes the entire social internet (blog posts, forum messages, Tweets, etc.) by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Information on the tool itself can be found at www.crimsonhexagon.com<\/a> and the in depth methodologies can be found here http:\/\/www.crimsonhexagon.com\/products\/whitepapers\/<\/a>. The time frame for the analysis is January 8 to 16, 2011.\u00a0 For the analysis of both blogs and Twitter PEJ first had to narrow the universe to relevant posts and used the following list of keywords in a Boolean search: <\/p>\n\n Giffords OR Loughner OR (Arizona AND shot) OR (Arizona AND shooting) OR (AZ AND shot) OR (AZ AND shooting) OR (Arizona AND death) OR (Arizona AND dead) OR (AZ AND death) OR (AZ AND dead) OR Tucson OR assassinate OR gunman OR (Christina AND Green) OR Gabby OR (Judge AND Roll) OR Dupnik OR vitriol OR (hate AND speech) OR Palin OR libel OR thrive OR memorial OR Obama <\/p>\n\n Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The January 8 Arizona assault stunned the nation and became one of the biggest stories in recent years. 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