Bloggers Focus on Developments in the Middle East

Bloggers were consumed with the upheaval in Egypt last week, using the platform to relay news updates, provide context to the crisis and debate the implications of the situation.

From January 31-February 4, fully 57% of the news links on blogs were about the unrest in Egypt, marking only the second time in the past nine months that a subject has garnered that much attention, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. (The shootings in Arizona that severely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords also received 57% of the links the week of January 10-14.) Indeed, the Egyptian crisis last week became the third-largest international story tracked by PEJ since it began the NMI in January 2009. The only overseas topics to surpass it were the UK elections in May 2010 and the protests following the disputed Iranian elections in June 2009. Bloggers' interest in the story mirrored that of the mainstream media last week, where it accounted for 56% of the newshole, according to the News Coverage Index.