Cable News Trending Topics for 2015-01-29
Once again Obama and Iran ended up at the top of the trending topics. I wanted to know why Iran is showing up, given that there’s very little actual news these days about the country or the talks. It turns out that it’s pretty much what happens when no topics really dominate the news — a few tweets that target the media as a whole get heavily retweeted. In this case, we have tweets like these:
#Iran, Tehran: Youth and Basij militant clash in Fatemi Blvd #IranTalks @AP @AFP @Reuters @UPI @FoxNews @CNN @CBC pic.twitter.com/sVUxmBd3NW
— Tina shokohi (@Setarehgan) January 29, 2015
#Iran, Tehran Protest Rally In Front Of Parliament #IranTalks @AP @AFP @Reuters @UPI @FoxNews @CNN #Iranian #News pic.twitter.com/IBMEiLZUYm
— Tina shokohi (@Setarehgan) January 29, 2015
The original sender is in Iran and is unlikely to be responding to CNN or Fox News; rather, they are carpet bombing Twitter. If it were a heavy news day, these would be lost, but on a quiet day they rise to the top. When you combine that with some more organic content, like this tweet…
We sit and we’re amused by the spat between @BarackObama & @netanyahu — BUT the reality is, #Iran poses a NUCLEAR THREAT @FoxNews
— Greta Van Susteren (@greta) January 30, 2015
… you end up topping the topics for the day.
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