Zombies and Cocaine --What else? -- are the Hot Topics Online

In a week when the mainstream press focused on health care reform, the economy and the war in Afghanistan, the conversation on both Twitter and blogs was dominated by a very different set of problems-zombie attacks and cocaine on U.S. currency. For the week of August 17-21, the top story for bloggers was about Canadian researchers who conducted a mathematical exercise to see if a zombie attack would lead to the collapse of civilization. One-third (33%) of the top news-related links from blogs were to a single BBC story about the study, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The same story was the No. 3 subject on Twitter last week, receiving 14% of the news-related links from tweets.