Feedster search of RSS comments about Sudan
took a huge jump overnight, to 12926 from 4263. This is
more than 8000 new RSS-feed mentions in 24 hours. Twice as many
new mentions overnight as were indexed by Feedster in the past year or
so.
Not sure what is going on to create this jump. My hunch is
the boost is probably driven by reporting on the peace settlement
between the government and the main rebel group in the north/south
war–a settlement which unfortunately does not include the
goverrnment-supported genocidal militias in Darfur in western Sudan.
But why the jump now? There has been news before. Could it be
that our collective web initiative is having some effect? Hmmm. I’d like to
think so, but am constitutionally skeptical. Perhaps Ethan
Zuckerman, who continues to blog thoughtfully about Sudan and Africa, and who does media attention studies, will come up with a way to quantify the mentions by type.
In any case, attention to Sudan
is good news–and most of the coverage of the peace agreement
emphasizes that it does not address the situation in Darfur. So
we can hope that the net result will be more understanding of Sudan and the genocide there. Good to keep in mind that Sudan is a very large country in terms of area, Darfur alone is the size of Texas.
