I saw a provocatively titled post on the PRSA wesbite yesterday, called, "Analog vs. Digital: Traditional Media Fights to Remain Relevant". Like everyone else, I've seen a lot of these stories lately and it seems that mainstream media has been pronounced dead. But, based on what I've seen in our own research on traditional and social media, calling mainstream media dead or irrelevant seems very premature and it misrepresents the actual dynamics and information exchange between mainstream and social media. The ...

We were curious to read the recently published study correlating social media engagement and financial performance for the world’s 100 most valuable brands (per Interbrand), published by the Altimeter Group and WetPaint, since it covers an issue we are particularly interested in: how do you link a brand’s social media activities to bottom-line results? To add to our interest, the study used very similar methodology to the one we used in a study we released earlier this year, where we ...

So says a new study examining traditional news and blog coverage of the 2008 presidential election. Researchers at Cornell used computer algorithms to identify, track, and pinpoint the origin of repeated phrases on 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs. While a small subset of blogs such as Hot Air and Talking Points Memo generated internet widespread memes, most blogs lagged behind mainstream media by about 2.5 hours. With Twitter getting all the credit for breaking the news of Michael Jackson’s death, ...

By now, it seems like everyone is familiar with the fact that while CNN was broadcasting Sarah Palin’s spat with Letterman, something was happening on Twitter last Friday. Over the weekend that followed, Twitter became a key channel of information for what was happening in Iran, as the accusations that the election was stolen grew into massive protests – the largest since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Twitter was used to funnel information in and out of Iran: to organize Denial ...

Today we bring you the full Power 50 Blog report. When my colleagues at Context Analytics and I set out to conduct this study, we wanted to provide PR professionals with research that would help them navigate the blogosphere by identifying who the new influencers are, and the nature of their newfound influence. Rather than simply providing another list of “top blogs” based on opinion, we wanted to address three specific questions: 1) Which blogs are driving mainstream media content? 2) When ...