Dow Jones Insight - 2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse: Clinton Campaign Picks Up Steam in Blogs and Message Boards

NEW YORK, May 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Results from the Dow Jones Insight -- 2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse show that over the past month Hillary Clinton's mentions in the mainstream media have declined in tandem with the likelihood of her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate. However, if blogs lead the way, Clinton's campaign may still be viable in the election.

Candidates Influence the Blogs

Two weeks ago (May 13-19), Clinton's coverage on blogs and boards hit a low point as she received just a 25 percent share, with McCain finally rising to second place with 29 percent and Obama padding his already comfortable lead to 46 percent. But in the most recent seven-day period (May 20-26), Clinton jumped back into second place on the blogs and boards with 30 percent (7,088 mentions), compared to McCain who stayed level at 29 percent (6,785 mentions). At the same time, Obama's lead shrank to 41 percent (with 9,712 mentions) from 46 percent, clearly demonstrating that the Clinton mentions came at the expense of Obama's coverage.

Having dropped their discussion of Clinton to such low levels just a week earlier, social media appears to be ahead of the curve again: some protesting her continued presence in the race, others urging her to fight on, many railing against her remarks about Robert F. Kennedy and weighing the pros and cons of a possible vice presidency.

Meanwhile, Clinton's coverage in the mainstream press has shrunk slowly in the weeks since the May 5 primaries. In the most recent seven-day period (May 20-26), Clinton's share of all mentions fell 2 percentage points to 32% (10,502 mentions), while McCain gained two percentage points to 27%, with 8,892 mentions, and Obama slipped by one point to 41% (13,232 mentions).

Red State/Blue State Issues Coverage Similar But Shows Some Key Differences

With all the talk in the 2004 election about the differing concerns and electorates of Red States vs. Blue States, or those considered to be solidly Democratic or Republican states, Dow Jones Insight took a look at how the coverage by mainstream media in those states differed on some of the more controversial domestic "wedge" issues.

While the results showed that the coverage had more in common than was different -- on the issue of faith in particular -- there were a few key areas where coverage levels between the two groups varied, in expected ways.

Blue States had more coverage about the environment (20 percent of total coverage for all candidates on the five wedge issues vs. 18 percent in the Red States press) and on same-sex marriage (3 percent of total coverage on the issues vs. 2 percent in the Red States press). Red States, meanwhile, had higher coverage on immigration (13 percent of all wedge issue coverage in Red vs. 11 percent in Blue) and abortion (6 percent vs. 5 percent). Faith was virtually equal, with Red States at 61 percent and Blue States at 60 percent on high volumes relative to the other issues.

The most noticeable differences overall both involved McCain, who had higher coverage on immigration in the Red States press (20 percent of his total coverage on the five issues in Red States) than in Blue States (18 percent of his issues-related coverage), and higher coverage on same-sex marriage in Blue States (4 percent of all McCain coverage on the five issues) than in Red (3 percent), a small percentage overall but representing a disparity of 33 percent.

The Dow Jones Insight -- 2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse tracks four key areas of media coverage related to the election, as reported across traditional and social media sources, including:

    -- Coverage of key issues by party
    -- Issue ownership by party
    -- Coverage of policies by media type
    -- Share of voice analysis - press coverage by each candidate

The Dow Jones Insight -- 2008 Presidential Election Media Pulse provides a high-level view of a competitive media landscape and demonstrates how candidates and issues are covered in the media and how that coverage changes over time. Dow Jones Insight combines proven research methodologies, trusted content and advanced text-mining and visualization tools to deliver strategic qualitative and quantitative media measurement metrics. Organizations use the analysis to nurture their reputation, demonstrate the effectiveness of their communications strategies and achieve business objectives. The platform processes nearly a million articles, Web pages, blogs and message board posts per day.

ABOUT DOW JONES

Dow Jones & Company (http://www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV; http://www.newscorp.com). Dow Jones is a leading provider of global business news and information services. Its Consumer Media Group publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Its Enterprise Media Group includes Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Factiva, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones Indexes and Dow Jones Financial Information Services. Its Local Media Group operates community-based information franchises. Dow Jones owns 50% of SmartMoney and 33% of STOXX Ltd. and provides news content to radio stations in the U.S.

SOURCE Dow Jones & Company

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