Cruise Ship Accident, Election Top Public's Interest: Young People Track Web Protests Over Online Piracy Bills

The deadly crash of a cruise ship off of the coast of Italy and the latest developments in the 2012 presidential campaign topped the public’s news interests last week.

About a quarter (26%) say they followed news about the cruise ship accident more closely than any other news. A comparable percentage (23%) say they followed news about candidates for the 2012 presidential election most closely, according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted Jan. 19-22 among 1,002 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

But the protest by popular websites against proposed online piracy legislation was a top story for young people. Nearly a quarter (23%) of those younger than 30 say they followed news about the online piracy fight most closely. That is about the same as the percentage following the 2012 elections most closely (21%). Among the public as a whole, just 7% say they followed news about the web protests – which included sites such as Wikipedia going dark for the day – more closely than any other story.

News about the election and the battle for the Republican nomination received much more media attention than any other story. Election news accounted for 41% of coverage, far more than the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. The accident made up 10% of coverage, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).

The protests by popular websites and the debate in Congress over anti-piracy legislation accounted for 5% of the newshole, about the same amount of coverage given to economic news last week (4%).

The Week’s News

While Americans are about equally likely to say the 2012 elections or the cruise ship disaster was their top story last week, comparable numbers also say they followed each story very closely. Three-in-ten (30%) say this about the cruise accident and 28% say this about news about the presidential candidates. Partisans are about equally likely to say they followed election news very closely. Overall interest in election news is about the same as it has been since the start of the year.

Overall, 16% say they tracked news about the website protests very closely.  About a quarter of those 18 to 29 (23%) followed this news very closely; 51% say they followed this news at least fairly closely. Among those 65 and older, just 28% say they followed this news very or fairly closely. Democrats (20%) and independents (19%) are more likely than Republicans (11%) to say they followed the online protests very closely.

One-in-ten (10%) say they followed news about the nation’s economy most closely last week. About a third (35%) say they followed this news very closely, a level of interest that has fluctuated little in recent weeks. Economic news made up 4% of coverage, separating out about 1% of coverage devoted to the bankruptcy filing of the Eastman Kodak company.

Fewer than one-in-ten (6%) say their top story was the Obama administration’s decision to reject current plans for the Keystone XL oil pipeline that was to run from Canada to Texas; 22% say they followed this news very closely. News about the administration’s decision made up 2% of coverage.

Just 1% say their top story was the bankruptcy filing last week by Kodak, the once-dominant photo film maker; 7% say they followed this news very closely. About a third of those 65 and older (32%) say they followed this news at least fairly closely, compared with 13% of those under 30. News about the bankruptcy filing accounted for 1% of coverage.

These findings are based on the most recent installment of the weekly News Interest Index, an ongoing project of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The index, building on the Center’s longstanding research into public attentiveness to major news stories, examines news interest as it relates to the news media’s coverage. The weekly survey is conducted in conjunction with The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, which monitors the news reported by major newspaper, television, radio and online news outlets on an ongoing basis. In the most recent week, data relating to news coverage were collected Jan. 16-22, and survey data measuring public interest in the top news stories of the week were collected Jan. 19-22 from a nationally representative sample of 1,002 adults.

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About the News Interest Index

The News Interest Index is a weekly survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press aimed at gauging the public’s interest in and reaction to major news events. This project has been undertaken in conjunction with the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, an ongoing content analysis of the news.  The News Coverage Index catalogues the news from top news organizations across five major sectors of the media: newspapers, network television, cable television, radio and the internet.  Each week (from Monday through Sunday) PEJ compiles this data to identify the top stories for the week.  (For more information about the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, go to www.journalism.org.) The News Interest Index survey collects data from Thursday through Sunday to gauge public interest in the most covered stories of the week.

Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted January 19-22, 2012 among a national sample of 1,002 adults 18 years of age or older living in the continental United States (601 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 401 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 211 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older.

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region to parameters from the March 2011 Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample is also weighted to match current patterns of telephone status based on extrapolations from the 2011 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size within the landline sample. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

This article was originally published by the Pew Research Center For the People & the Press, a project of the Pew Research Center.  It is reprinted here with permission.