July 14, 2009
Posted: July 14th, 2009 07:12 PM ET

From

WASHINGTON (CNN) - While confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor are dominating the airwaves and some of the most-trafficked blogs on the Web, it seems like there's not much buzz being generated anywhere else.

Today, "#Sotomayor" - the hash tag used on Twitter to easily search for tweets about the hearings - has been rotating on and off Twitter's top "Trending Topics," while "Harry Potter," "Bruno" and even much older hot topics such as "#iranelection" have been constantly populating the site's top words to appear on Twitter.

It even seems like Judiciary Committee senators may not be all that interested in tweeting about the hearings. Republican Tom Coburn (@TomCoburn) tweeted today about a new "Pork Report," and told his followers to keep their eyes on for the "health care reform debate" – but made no mention of Sotomayor. Democrat Russ Feingold's (@RussFeingold) last tweet came on July 10.

There were a few Judiciary Committee senators on Twitter who did make mention of the hearings. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham's team did tweet from his Twitter account (@GrahamBlog) about the hearings, which also rated a few mentions from Republican Orrin Hatch (@OrrinHatch).

Hatch tweeted: "Our current gov is so-far removed from the limited gov that our Founding Fathers intended that they must be rolling over in their graves." Hatch also wrote: "Listening to both sides during Day 1 of the Sotomayor hearing proved 1 thing-the battle over judges is not merely a philosophical battle..."

Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter (@SenArlenSpecter) weighed in as well during the hearings: "I think it was wrong for America to wait until 1967 to have an African American justice, Thurgood Marshall, on the court."

Elsewhere on the Web, interest in the hearings seems to have faded. By the end of the day, Google Trends ranked only three Sotomayor-related searches among its top 50.

Filed under: Social Networking • Sonia Sotomayor • Supreme Court • Twitter


What If You Threw an Inquisition and Nobody Cared? «DEEP BRAIN DIARY   July 15th, 2009 7:17 am ET

[...] laments the fact that Tweeters out there are more concerned with Harry Potter than the Sonia Sotomayor [...]

everthing old is newt again   July 15th, 2009 12:04 am ET

Sorry – she's qualified, intelligent, well-spoken, and has an admirable record of achievement. Booooring.

Can we talk about Sarah Palin's shoes instead?

xargaw   July 14th, 2009 11:38 pm ET

Watched most of the hearings. One would expect tough and thorough questioning of a nominee. However, thought Senator Graham was an embarrassment to himself and Sotomayor held her own against him with grace and competence.

Former Republican Never Again   July 14th, 2009 11:17 pm ET

Jeff Sessions is the most racist Senator ever. He has disgraced himself with his unfair badgering of Judge Sotomayor.

David   July 14th, 2009 11:11 pm ET

It's really odd how CNN is trying to force social networking on the American public. Who cares about the twits on Twitter, or the Facebook? All CNN has done is lose whatever respect 'adults' had for their journalism, and turned themselves into a social network. I can't even stand to watch CNN on tv any-longer.

Diane Keichinger   July 14th, 2009 10:51 pm ET

You Go Girl

Frozone   July 14th, 2009 10:51 pm ET

This is not very accurate as many of the topics in trending are spam. At least half of Bruno or Harry Potter are obviously comments left by bots. Do some digging on your web stories.

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