Clarification

ONE area where Barack Obama and his tech-savvy supporters might expect to lead the debate on health-care reform is online. Last year Mr Obama recruited legions of online champions in his campaign for the presidency. But his digital backers are proving to be less influential on this issue, according to a new study by Market Sentinel, a firm of British media analysts. It has tried to quantify which of dozens of American and British outlets have led the reform debate online, in particular on one question: whether a move towards a British-style National Health Service would be welcome. To do so the analysts measured how often websites (and other organisations and individuals) were cited and linked to by other websites. More citations and links, especially from websites themselves reckoned to be influential, means more influence. Similarly it tried to measure how pro- or anti-reform individual outlets have been, again using “citation analysis”. They portray an online debate that is as polarised online as it is in the real world, with the extremists on either side typically being more influential than the more moderate voices pushing for change.

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Clarification: In our original chart we did not state whether the Conservative Party was British or American. This was changed on Thursday September 10th.