Wow. Not only is Rupert Murdoch having some serious offline troubles with his embroiled tabloid News of the World, but he’s being kicked around Twitter, too. Topics about the phone hacking scandal and subsequent closure of the tabloid were represented in 53 percent of all news links in tweets sent last week, July 4th to 8th, according to numbers from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Read more

The scandal that led up to Rupert Murdoch’s decision to close Britain’s 168-year-old newspaper the News Of The World resonated with the Twitter community and generated an enormous amount of tweets and retweets around the #NOTW hashtag, peaking at over 70,000 per hour around 5pm on Thursday, July 7.

The Guardian has analysed half a million tweets that used the #NOTW hashtag, starting at 9.40am on the Thursday through to Monday, July 11, and produced a brilliant, streaming infographic that shows how the drama unfolded on Twitter as the news broke (and kept on breaking), showing all the people, newspapers and companies involved.

Read more

It hasn’t been a good week for Rupert Murdoch and News International.

On Monday the Fox News Politics account was hacked on Twitter. And on Thursday, the world (and Twitter) was rocked by the announcement that the 168-year old News Of The World newspaper would be closing its doors forever, after being unable to refute claims that the paper authorised hacking into the mobile phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of 7/7 bombing victims, amongst thousands of others.

The final issue of the News Of The World has been published today. And perhaps fittingly, the publication’s sister paper, The Sun, was been ‘hacked’ on Twitter, with the hijacker using the platform to send a supportive message to the News Of The World, while attacking those who they perceived helped bring about its downfall.

Read more

Twitter erupted over the news that Rupert Murdoch’s 168-year-old tabloid News of the World would be shutting its doors forever this Sunday in response to the controversy over their phone hacking. And, despite “News of the World” itself only trending on Twitter for a brief moment early Friday morning, this scandal could prove to be bigger than even the massive super injunction scandal which preceded it.
Read more