Japan
was the hottest topic in the blogosphere for the survey period of April 4-8 with
28% of blog news links to stories about the ongoing aftermath of the
earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown.
That is according to the most recent Project for Excellence
in Journalism New Media Index.
Number two on that online hit parade was global warming at
25% of links, driven by congressional testimony from a physicist who had been
expected to downplay global warming but instead said early returns from a study
supported the theory.
That story got "almost no coverage in the mainstream media, PEJ
noted.
Blogging on Japan
featured skepticism that Japanese citizens were being told the truth about the
catastrophe. Atsushi Shibata, senior media analyst for Japanese broadcaster
NHK, told B&C/Multi he spent 10 days in Sendai,
one of the hardest-hit cities reporting on the aftermath. "Most of the
Japanese realize how horrific the tsunami is," he said in an e-mail late
Thursday. "It will take years before Japan
will recover from this massive disaster."
Tops on Twitter--10% of the news links--was a story about
Google's YouTube spending $100 million to create original programming complete
with advertising. Google has been pushing hard to free up spectrum from
traditional original-programmers-with-advertising--broadcasters--so it can be
turned over to broadband use, including for bandwidth-hungry online video
delivery.
The top YouTube video was Egyptian protesting, but in
this case the high official being asked to leave was a soccer referee. The
most-viewed video was of a game in Eqypt between Tunisia's Club Africain and the home team, Egypt's Zamalek, whose apparently winning goal was waived
off, causing the fans to storm the field and force the referee to flee.
It is the second time in four weeks that a soccer video has scored on YouTube.
A clip of a player kicking an owl mascot in Columbia (it died) was the top
