I scraped Breitbart’s all posts from Facebook page. This is a representation of all ‘engagement’ (likes, comments and shares) for each month. The first six months of 2015 saw tremendous growth in engagement and it would be worth exploring what actually happened in that period, so I did a search of the Nexis service for ‘Breitbart’ across January – June 2015 to see if mainstream news services mentioned the site. Nexis is not comprehensive but it does track most major news publications and services. I did not include ‘press releases’ or ‘newswires’. Plus I collated all the articles that mentioned ‘Breitbart’ without any data cleaning so likely multiple entries for same article published in slightly different ways.
The table at the bottom of this post lists the publications with the most mentions of ‘Breitbart’. A few comments about this list. I had to search for ‘US Official News’ as I had not heard of it before. It is LexisNexis’s own news aggregation service. I think I can assume that only subscribers to LexisNexis can access this so it is not important for getting a sense of this period. MailOnline is next and as a click chasing operation it clearly went after ‘outrage’. There are multiple entries for WaPo blogs in the list so I think posts are being counted more than once. Interesting to see the Canberra Times down the bottom.
A key event early in this period was the release of the movie American Sniper. It is a useful example of how news sites refer to Breitbart as being representative of a conservative ‘right wing’ position when discussing the movie in the context of the ‘culture wars’. Breitbart ran a review describing the movie as a “Patriotic Pro-War on Terror Masterpiece” January 16. A number of news outlets then cited this review so as to include a ‘right wing’ perspective. CNN was the first outlet to refer to this review in a kind of explainer of why the movie seemed to succeed at the box office “Why American Sniper is a Smash hit” January 19. Hollywoodreporter.com was next with “Oscars: ‘American Sniper’s’ Hopes for a Win Complicated by Politics” January 21. CNN published another piece citing the Breitbart review this time framing the ‘culture wars’ response as largely misguided if not outright wrong “What people got wrong about American Sniper“. The piece compares the movie to Spingsteen’s misunderstood Born in the USA. Washington Post ran two pieces in its Style Blog “Everything you need to know about the American Sniper culture wars controversy” and “Civil rights group: Eastwood, Cooper need to help stop anti-Arab speech inspired by ‘American Sniper’” published 26 and 28 January respectively. The 28 January piece cites a second Breitbart piece about reported incidents of anti-Arab speech triggered by the movie. Lastly, on 28 January a New York Times story “American Sniper fuels war on the home front” reports on the controversy from the previous fortnight and cites a third Breitbart story on a tweet by Seth Rogen.
Reading the three pieces mentioned in these articles requires a subtle attuned to the concerns of Breitbart. The review celebrates the movie and what is understood to be general sentiment behind it. It also couches the movie as a kind of repudiation (I think?) of ‘Big Hollywood’. ‘Big Hollywood’ is a meta-tag on the site and therefore can be understood to be one of the major concerns. I think it refers to the conservative belief that the ‘cultural left’ rules Hollywood and that there is a kind of conspiracy to de-valuing ‘right wing’ culture. The other pieces are similar and even more explicitly framed in terms of broader concerns. The second WaPo blog piece is about ‘mainstream media’ reporting on ‘hoaxes’ as if they were true. The third piece interprets a tweet by Seth Rogen in such a way as to suggest that the movie is akin to Nazi propaganda. These are also tagged Big Hollywood. In this context then ‘Big Hollywood’ is not only about the movie industry but popular culture more broadly.
Table: Most mentions of ‘Breitbart’ Jan-Jun 2015.
| PUBLICATION | Count |
| US Official News | 64 |
| MailOnline | 40 |
| Washington Post Blogs | 35 |
| The Guardian | 22 |
| Politico.com | 18 |
| CNN.com | 15 |
| The National Journal | 10 |
| Independent.co.uk | 10 |
| Governance, Risk & Compliance Monitor Worldwide | 9 |
| Washington Post BlogsThe Fix | 9 |
| The Times (London) | 9 |
| Arutz Sheva | 8 |
| Tampa Bay Times | 8 |
| The New York Times | 7 |
| The State Journal- Register (Springfield, IL) | 7 |
| Pittsburgh Tribune Review | 6 |
| The Washington Post | 6 |
| Washingtonpost.com | 6 |
| Investor’s Business Daily | 6 |
| Slate Magazine | 6 |
| Washington Post BlogsErik Wemple | 5 |
| ALALAM | 5 |
| Express Online | 5 |
| Legal Monitor Worldwide | 4 |
| Jpost.com (The Jerusalem Post online edition) | 4 |
| Washington Post BlogsThe Style Blog | 4 |
| Contra Costa Times (California) | 4 |
| The New York Post | 4 |
| The Justice: Brandeis University | 4 |
| USNEWS.com | 4 |
| telegraph.co.uk | 4 |
| Jüdische Allgemeine | 4 |
| Jerusalem Post | 3 |
| San Jose Mercury News (California) | 3 |
| hollywoodreporter.com | 3 |
| Yerepouni Daily News | 3 |
| La Croix International | 3 |
| McClatchy Washington Bureau | 3 |
| Class Action Reporter | 3 |
| i-Independent Print Ltd | 3 |
| The Dialogue | 3 |
| Canberra Times (Australia) | 3 |