Study: Election, Tragedies Dominate Top Stories of 2012

The public’s news interests were very much focused on domestic developments this year, with the election outcome, last week’s horrific school shooting and Hurricane Sandy leading the list of the top stories of 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.

With the exception of the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya in September, which became a bitterly debated campaign issue, no foreign news story cracked the list of top stories.

The presidential election was the year’s top story, according to Pew Research Center’s News Interest Index, which tracks interest in major stories in a weekly basis. In the days following Barack Obama’s reelection, 60% followed campaign news very closely.

The Dec. 14 shooting at an elementary school in Newtown Conn. attracted nearly as much interest; 57% followed news about the tragedy very closely. Another large-scale shooting this year – this one at an Aurora, Colo. movie theater in July – also drew widespread interest, with nearly half (48%) following this event very closely.

Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast in late October, drew very close interest from 53% of Americans. Though it struck in the final days of the campaign, interest in Sandy surpassed interest in the election that week.

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