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Far
be it from me to suggest that the good folks at Pew are competitive or
anything, but I could not help but notice a curious omission in the
just-released report
from the Pew Forum on religion in the news in 2009; namely, a certain reticence
about the amount of notice garnered by Trinity College’s 2008 American Religious
Identification Survey (ARIS).
Here’s the deal. In its survey, Pew differentiates coverage according to types
of media, making the observation that religion news tends to generate a lot of
buzz in the blogosphere, as per the following graphic:
Popular
Religion Topics on Blogs in 2009
|
Week |
Topic* |
Percent of Links |
|
Feb. 9-13 |
Catholic Indulgences (#3 story |
7% |
|
Feb. 16-20 |
Founder of Islamic TV Station |
8% |
|
Mar. 9-13 |
Decline of Organized Religion (#1 story) |
30% |
|
Mar. 16-20 |
Culture Wars (#4 story) |
5% |
|
Apr. 6-10 |
Same-Sex Marriage (#1 story) |
26% |
|
Apr. 20-24 |
Same-Sex Marriage (#2 story) |
16% |
|
May 4-8 |
Same-Sex Marriage (#1 story) |
14% |
|
May 25-29 |
Same-Sex Marriage (#1 story) |
35% |
|
Jun. 15-19 |
Same-Sex Marriage (#2 story) |
6% |
|
Oct. 26-30 |
Scientology (#4 story) |
11% |
|
Nov. 30-Dec. 4 |
Swiss Ban on Minarets (#1 |
17% |
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Now,
while there are significant religious dimensions to the issue of
same-sex marriage, it is not a religion story per se, and coverage of it often does not touch on religion. By contrast the entirely religious story that
created the biggest buzz was “Decline of Organized Religion,”
which generated 30 percent of blogospheric traffic during the week of March 9. That, of course, was the story created by the 2008 ARIS. (Actually, ARIS showed not the decline of organized religion as such but the rise in the proportion of Americans who claim to have no religion–i.e. the decline of religious identification, or religion, if you like.)
Of particular note according to Pew (and I concur) is the fact that some stories that register only modestly in the MSM make a big impact in New Media. You would have thought that the prime example of this would be, yes, the ARIS survey, which (according to tracking by Pew’s own Project Excellence in Journalism) sent religion to the top of the charts in the blogosphere that week without making the list of the most important stories in the MSM. But no, Pew’s case in point was the Catholic indulgences story, which during the week of February 9 was only the third most important story in the blogosphere, garnering a mere seven percent of the links.
The Pew Forum is in the business of doing all kinds of religion surveys, but to date none of them have ever grabbed the amount of attention the 2008 ARIS did. Coincidence? I would not venture to say.
