Research Shows Media Coverage of Tech is Going Mainstream
September 28th, 2010 by Tony Sapienza
I spotted a news report today on a Pew Research study looking at mainstream media coverage of technology. It’s no surprise that Apple is in the lead in terms of company coverage, followed by Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft. What I found more interesting were the tech topics that headed the list. The top stories were those focused on how technology makes life more productive; in second place were stories about the security of the Internet (or lack of security to be more precise). The good news: positive themes (tech’s empowering effect on people) ranked higher than negative themes (how technology makes for less human interaction). The biggest single storyline: texting while driving. It’s also interesting to note that tech as a whole surpassed topics like religion and immigration as a percentage of total media coverage (but tech is well behind crime). There’s a lot we can learn from this research, but one takeaway is clear: coverage of technology is increasingly crossing beyond tech-oriented outlets or news sections to the top of the American news agenda. Not that many years ago, it would have been impossible to find this kind of interest in tech companies and the types of tech stories spotlighted by this study.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 4:41 pm and is filed under PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
November 2nd, 2010 at 9:40 am
Tony:
I think that tech has become more prominent in media because there are so many outlets (broadcast, print, cable & internet) and a 24 hour news cycle. Much of the content on tech is filler for excess capacity. That said, it is still a positive for Tech PR. The question that I would ask is, “How much attention (from media consumers) does tech get relative to hard news?”
Also, technology innovation drives marketing activities at technology developers, which leads to additional media exposure that is both internally developed and spun, as well as, external reviews.