Matthew Hindman

This figure (also a draft illustration from the book) performs a similar analysis to the graphics above, this time looking at traffic among the top 50 sites in Hitwise's "News and Media" category. Hitwise describes the category as including "Websites of magazines and newspapers, and news relating to the computer and IT industry"; Websites for broadcasting corporations are also prominent members, including sites for the Weather Channel, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC. Here again, the size of a site is proportional to the traffic it receives, and edge width is proportional to traffic flow.

Click on the map for a full-size version; click the link below to read more about the figure.

The findings here are somewhat different from findings for the Internet as a whole. The disparity between the largest sites and the smallest sites is less extreme than in the previous map, and the largest sites play less of a role in directing traffic patterns. News sites are more destination than gateway to the rest of the Web; many of these sites get a substantial portion of their traffic from the top sites in the previous graph. In general, citizens do seem to get their online and offline political messages from the same sources; even Web-only outlets, such as Yahoo News, Google News, or the Drudge Report, rely almost exclusively on traditional outlets and wire services. Still, the online news market is not a perfect mirror of traditional media.