New Media Index: Bloggers Focus on General McChrystal; Dismissal of Viacom-YouTube Suit Tops Twitter

The resignation of General Stanley McChrystal accounted for the most news links shared by bloggers during the week of June 21-25, while the most-Tweeted news links concerned the dismissal of Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube. Speaking of YouTube, the most-viewed news and politics video on the Google-owned video site for the second week in a row was Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) physically confronting two men who asked him questions on the street, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellent in Journalism’s New Media Index.

The loose-tongued general and the war effort as a whole accounted for 27 percent of news links shared by bloggers, followed by: a BBC.com report about New York web designer Mark Suppes, who is part of a group of amateur scientists trying to produce clean energy on their own through nuclear fusion, at 14 percent; the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, at 10 percent; an article in USA Today about doctors refusing new Medicare patients due to low government payment rates, at 9 percent; and scientists simulating sounds made by subatomic particles produced at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, at 8 percent.

The dismissal of Viacom’s $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube was the subject of 19 percent of Tweeted news links, followed by: McChrystal and the war in Afghanistan, at 10 percent; the board that oversees naming of Internet domains officially approving a domain suffix devoted solely to pornography, at 8 percent; an msnbc.com item compiling positive reviews of Apple’s new iPhone 4, at 6 percent; and a warning that some Android applications allow third-party entities to access sensitive or private information, also at 6 percent.

Etheridge’s outburst was followed on YouTube by: video of a baby in Brazil dancing the samba; video of a large Jesus statue in Ohio burning after being hit by lightning; a Russia Today report about a Seattle cop caught on video punching a teenage girl; and a comparison of musical performances by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Miley Cyrus.

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