LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The British royal wedding
has become one of the top 10 news stories of the 21st century,
but has already been eclipsed by media coverage of the death of
Osama bin Laden, according to a study released on Thursday.
Less than a week after U.S. President Barack Obama
announced that U.S. forces had killed the al Qaeda leader in
Pakistan, the bin Laden story had racked up more than 84
million citations in the global print and electronic media,
social media sites and on the Internet.
The survey by the Global Language Monitor said the death of
bin Laden was already the third biggest world news story of the
21st century.
By contrast, the April 29 marriage of Prince William to
Kate Middleton ranked in 5th place with more than 63 million
citations worldwide, ahead of the media blitz surrounding the
2009 sudden death of Michael Jackson with about 56 million.
But the biggest news story around the world since January
2000 remains the rise of China as an economic and political
power, the Global Language Monitor said.
The China story has about 300 million citations to date,
followed by the election of Obama to the U.S. presidency with
123 million.
The Texas-based Global Language Monitor (GLM) used an
algorithm to track citations of the biggest news stories on the
top 750,000 world print and electronic media sites, as well as
citations on the Internet, blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook and
other social media sites.
The top 10 news stories of the 21st century, according to
the GLM are;
1) The rise of China
2) Election of Barack Obama
3) Death of Osama bin Laden
4) Wikileaks
5) British royal wedding
6) Death of Michael Jackson
7) Sept 11. 2001 attacks on the United States.
8) Japanese quake/tsunami/nuclear crisis
9) Arab Spring uprisings
10)Global economic meltdown
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant)
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