Skewz.com Launches Election 2008 Media Insight Report and Reveals Bias

• ShareThis Email PDF Print

The Skewz Election 2008 report is a new service on Skewz.com that takes political aggregation sites to an entirely new level

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) June 13, 2008

Today Skewz.com , one of the first user-driven political media aggregation site for exposing media bias, launched a new feature that gives users a more in-depth look at how the media reports on specific issues and presidential candidates. The feature, called the Skewz Election 2008 Media Insight Report, collects data from users on how the media is shaping people's perceptions about the presidential candidates and political issues of the election.

"The Skewz Election 2008 report is a new service on Skewz.com that takes political aggregation sites to an entirely new level," says Vipul Vyas, founder of Skewz.com. "Skewz is already a leading user-driven site for exposing media bias, and now we're able to take everything we've learned and packaged the data in a meaningful, useful manner."

Some of the key points of the report are listed below, and could also give some insight into why Clinton did not secure the Democratic presidential nomination. For example:

•     Obama has dominated the media share of voice. Obama's issues with Reverend Wright and discussion of race ignited attention that earned him the top covered candidate in the media, giving him a media share of voice of more than 50% of election 2008 related articles. Clinton's share of voice was 32%, and McCain was mentioned in only 17% of election 2008 related articles.
•     "Owning an issue" leads to greater media coverage. Both Obama and McCain have "owned" specific issues, resulting in greater media coverage. Reverend Wright and race represent 14% of Obama related articles, while 12% of McCain related articles deal with Iraq war. Articles on Clinton's issues were scattered, from her rivalry with Obama, to the gas tax relief and Bill Clinton's involvement in the campaign.
•     Coverage of one candidate is often secured through the opponent: More than 70% of articles about a candidate actually deal with…other candidates, (i.e., what they have said or "lied" about, and candidate reactions to "sensations."
•     The blogosphere isn't so biased. The top blogs the media considers far left or far right are actually perceived as less biased on certain topics than the established media. For example, the Huffington Post, which is believed to be strong liberal, is perceived as moderate liberal on topics such as the elections and health care, and less liberal than the New York Times on the issues of economic/fiscal policy.
•     Bias is perception. Much of the mainstream media and blogs had already placed Obama as McCain's elected opponent before it was announced, giving readers a perceived bias against Clinton. For some, it's become a candidate personality race rather than an issue-based campaign. For example, Obama resigning from Trinity Church made more headlines than anything he said about the economy.

"The market for political media aggregation sites is growing," says Vyas. "Because Skewz was one of the first user-driven sites of its kind, we are now reaping the benefits of not only adding more interactive ways to expose and understand media bias, but also analyzing and identifying patterns in the bias. The Skewz Election 2008 report will offer over time far more value than other simple political media aggregation sites can."

How The Report Works

The Skewz Election 2008 Media Insight Report is compiled from the site's user activity - submissions, tags, comments - since its beta inception one year ago. The report gauges the sentiment towards candidates and issues that contribute the most to user's perceptions.

Housed in the newly added Elections 2008 tab on Skewz.com, the report is a first look at what insight Skewz can generate, and will be first of other value-added features Skewz will offer.

"This report could give us some insight into why Clinton did not win the presidential nomination, at least from a media coverage perspective," says Jonathan Baciu, co-founder of Skewz. "Some of the findings, such as Clinton's low share of voice and lack of ownership of issues in the media, could give some indication as to why she did not win the popular Democratic vote."

Skewz.com has grown into a social platform that brings together a diversified group of intellectuals, politically astute and politically interested users since the launch. The site is now able to aggregate the data, analyze it, and use it to develop a new service that helps readers gain a better understanding about how people use and interpret the mainstream political media and blogsphere in the US.

MEDIA: Please visit http://www.skewz.com for more information. To read more about the Skewz Election 2008 report, go to: http://www.skewz.com/elections. Please contact customerservice@skewz.com to participate in the Skewz blog roll or widget program.

About Skewz
Originally founded to provide a forum for intelligent political debate free from strong-armed political persuasion and super charged emotional rhetoric, skewz.com has grown into a unique and integrated site that provides news and commentary from both sides of the political divide in a quantified, intuitive, and easy to read format.. Users can see a range of stories covering a given topic from both a liberal and conservative perspective.

The purpose of Skewz is to democratize political news by meaningfully sorting through it - without having one editor or one small group of people decide what political news was important and what wasn't. Like Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and Reddit, Skewz compiles all the news in one place, but Skewz is completely specialized in political topics.

Registered users can rate anything on the Internet in terms of its political bias whether that's liberal or conservative. Users can also submit and comment on political news from media sources (articles, videos, picture, editorials, etc.) or blogs and rate those submissions in terms of political bias.

Skewz users are evenly distributed between left and right with 36% on the left and 41% on the right and 23% center/undecided.

# # #

Share: