Pew: All A-Twitter Over News Corp.

More than half the news links on Twitter (53%) were to stories about the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal for July 4-8, according to Pew Research Center's latest New Media Index

That is the most concentrated interest in a single story on Twitter in since September 20-24 2010, when a story about Twitter itself--a security flaw that redirected users to third-party sites without their consent. That story drew 58% of the links.

A Pew researcher pointed out that Twitter news links are usually tech-heavy, which makes the hacking story an unusual top link.

That 53% for the News Corp. story compared with the 6% of mainstream media news holes the story accounted for over roughly the same period, according to the Pew/Project for Excellence in Journalism's News coverage Index.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.