In last week’s update, I included a survey on the media’s coverage of the Mark Twitchell trial. As of this morning a total of 73 responses were recorded. Here are the results:
It’s the reasons why people are or are not paying attention that I was really interested in, however:
Clearly there’s a difference between paying attention and wanting to pay attention. The good news for the media is that no respondents said the coverage was of low quality, and only one suggested it wasn’t being delivered appropriately.
I know there are plenty of people out there who want to read about the trial. I am not one of those people!
A total of 17 respondents (23%) would describe themselves as a member of the media. Just 4 respondents (5%) did not identify themselves as residents in the Edmonton region.
Twitchell Tweets
I decided to look at Twitchell-related tweets from Edmontonians since March 1. It’s interesting to see the weekends so clearly defined:
Here are the top twenty Twitchell tweeters:
- edmontonsun
- ctvedmonton
- KaraokeFanatic
- BillFortierCTV
- SimonOstler
- bengelinas
- RyanTumilty
- stalbertgazette
- ETownMickey
- edmontonjournal
- GlobalEdmonton
- MacsTheWord
- iNews880
- EdmontonCourts
- metroedmonton
- Jasmine09
- lindork
- EdmJrnlCitydesk
- YEG_Shannon
- cbcedmonton
So who’s talking about Twitchell on Twitter? The media, as you can see. Those 20 users account for 69.8% of all local Twitchell-related tweets.
MasterMaq's Blog 
Interesting look at a sensational murder trial, Mack!
Not that I’m tell you to do even more work, but I’d be interested to see a percentage breakdown for something like #yegvote #yegfed or #yegarena and see if issues of wider public importance are also dominated by traditional media tweeters.
Hmm that’s a good idea! I had started some #yegarena analysis, but not in this context.
Of the “other” responses, what were people’s reasons for or against watching the coverage?
Thanks Mack!
Some of the “others” against included: “nothing new has been revealed”, “it’s disturbing”, “the coverage has been sensationalistic and overblown”, “it turns my stomach”, “no interest”, and “I hate hearing about it all the time”.