Social Media Users Debate a Tea Party Favorite
Crazy Michelle got a lot of press last week, in the mainstream press stories were mostly election 2012 horse race handicapping, but in the blogosphere and twitterverse the stories were mainly negative.
From June 26 to July 1, fully one-third (33%) of the news links on blogs were about Bachmann, making her the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. And in a rare case of the same subject interesting both bloggers and Tweeters, the Minnesota Congresswoman was the No. 5 story on Twitter.
Bachmann was also a major newsmaker in the mainstream press last week, where much of the coverage discussed her emergence as a significant force in the GOP field. But bloggers and Twitter users eschewed that horserace angle and instead largely criticized her for what they saw as gaffes and hypocrisy.
The two main storylines that grabbed the attention of bloggers were Bachmann receiving government aid despite her condemnation of government handouts and the candidate’s confusion of John Wayne, the actor, with John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.