See the posts tagged \u2018ATNIX\u2019 on this site for a full collection of previous results.<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s also a very quiet one \u2013 only some 128,000 links to Australian news sites were shared on Twitter<\/em> this week, compared to the 142,000 in week 35 and the whopping 160,000 the week before that. Towards the end of the year, we\u2019ll have a look at the weekly cycles of activity, I think \u2013 and I wouldn\u2019t be at all surprised if we\u2019d see some longer-term ebbs and flows in news attention over that timeframe. The distribution of attention across our major sites also matches that from last week almost exactly, give or take a rounded percentage point here or there \u2013 the top ten sites are placed exactly as they were.<\/p>\n The amount of links to opinion and commentary sites and sections has also shrunken (from 18,800 to 15,700), and at least here there\u2019s a bit more movement on the leaderboard. The Conversation<\/em> regains its customary second place, leapfrogging The Age<\/em>\u2019s opinion section, and New Matilda<\/em> has an especially good week (in fifth place); ABC The Drum<\/em> (or more precisely, abc.net.au\/unleashed<\/em> URLs) drop well out of the top five, by contrast.<\/p>\n On to the daily results, then. For the news sites, there\u2019s nothing much to see here: much as last week, a clear illustration of the standard attention patterns (strong at the start of the week, then steadily dropping off towards the weekend), though it\u2019s notable that the Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> hasn\u2019t been able to maintain its somewhat stronger weekend position (boosted by the weekend magazine\u2019s feature articles, I\u2019d wager) this time around.<\/p>\n Amidst the overall steady-as-she-goes patterns, there is a smallish spike in numbers for The Age<\/em>, though: its piece on the latest salvo in the Australian \u2018Christian\u2019 Lobby\u2019s hate campaign<\/a> against same-sex marriage was shared some 530 times. Let\u2019s just say that this particular demonstration of fundamentalists rhetoric did not find many supporters on Twitter<\/em>. At all.<\/p>\n As far as the daily opinion and commentary sharing patterns are concerned, it\u2019s difficult to speak of spikes in activity when for the most part, that activity remained at or below the long-term average.<\/p>\n But for what it\u2019s worth, the small rise in activity around the Sydney Moring Herald<\/em> opinion section is due largely to an article about Malcolm Turnbull\u2019s call for more honesty in Australian politics<\/a>, which received some 165 tweets sharing it during 5 and 6 Sep.; another piece, on the question of whether the Prime Minister should attend an ACL function<\/a> after the organisation\u2019s repeated hate speech against homosexuality, received another 50-odd links.<\/p>\n Finally \u2013 not pictured on the graph above (as it\u2019s not normally a leading opinion site on Twitter<\/em>), New Matilda<\/em> scored a major hit (by its standards) with an interview with Noam Chomsky about Julian Assange<\/a> that was shared nearly 200 times on 4 Sep. (accounting for more than half of all links to New Matilda<\/em> being shared on Twitter<\/em> that day). We\u2019re back in very familiar territory here, of course \u2013 stories about Assange have regularly generated large spikes in Twitter<\/em> sharing for Australian news and opinion sites in the past, as the international WikiLeaks<\/em> and Assange supporter community picks the up and passes them on. That day, New Matilda<\/em> briefly became the second most shared Australian opinion site on Twitter<\/em>, thanks to this single story.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s against\u00a0 the backdrop of a very slow news week. Let\u2019s see if next week picks up a bit\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think I\u2019m running out of snappy opening lines for ATNIX posts \u2013 and I\u2019m not sure this one particularly deserves one, either: it\u2019s a pretty average week, as we\u2019ll see in a minute. In fact, as overall patterns go, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to see any significant differences between the news sharing patterns for this … <\/p>\nATNIX Week 36: 3-9 Sep. 2012<\/h3>\n
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