Patterns of Attention: Traditional and New Media (2013)

Undergraduate: Bryan Dworak

Faculty Advisor: Frank Baumgartner
Department: Political Science

---

At the dawn of the Internet age, there was great hope for the democratic potentials of the new technology. A decade and a half after the Internet surged onto the scene, the world has witnessed a great deal of change online and it surely has been used for democratic actions. The Arab Spring was at least partially organized on social media and presidential candidates have raised record amounts online. All the while, the media has long been held to be an important actor in politics. But, the traditional media has certain limits. We are currently amidst a transition from these traditional media sources like newspapers and television news to a new media comprised of platforms like blogs and Twitter. This study is grounded in political communication literature and examines coverage in traditional media sources such as The New York Times and in new media sources like blogs and Twitter accounts. Using the measures of entropy and kurtosis and by examining the distribution of coverage towards different topics over time, the analysis finds that despite a great hope surrounding the Internet, the new media is not all that different than the traditional media. It is more of the same.