According to the Pew Research Project, as of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites. Of that 74%, over 60% had some form of political engagement or conversation on those various sites. The purpose of this research project is to explore the effect trending hashtags have on topics covered by major news outlets, specifically The New York Times, compared to local news outlets – in this case, the Asheville Citizen-Times. By examining the most popular hashtags on Twitter in the last month and comparing and contrasting them to the topics covered by each news source, a relationship can certainly be found between trending words and phrases and the topics of news stories. The findings of this research are relevant to the political and social climate of the current culture. The theory of agenda setting could forever be changed. Instead of news media setting the agenda for politics, perhaps the power now lies in fingertips of social media users.
