Welcome to the garbage wars
Garbage has been in the news a lot this week, which is always a great way to end a political campaign season. It began when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage" at Trump's MSG rally on Sunday.
This set off a huge reaction from public figures with connections to the island, immediately condemning the comments, with some explicitly endorsing the Harris campaign in the hours that followed.
The conversation has now continued into this week after Biden yesterday referred to Trump supporters (or he might have been referring to one singular supporter's views, nobody's really sure about the apostrophe) as garbage on a video call.
This was immediately presented by many across social and traditional media as obviously equivalent in campaign impact, but is it? Well, no — or not so far — at least if we look at the media and public interest in the two.
The Biden comments, which he later attempted to clarify, and which Harris has distanced herself from, have about a third of the media interest and a quarter of the public interest when compared to the Puerto Rico reporting. The latter hit 188k engagements with reporting the day after the MSG event, and is still going strong, while the Biden interview so far has 70k today.
This was true everywhere across social media, with Hinchcliffe's joke drawing more attention on every major social platform except one — X. On Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Reddit, discussion about Puerto Rico has significantly more engagement.
On X, though, posts about the Biden comments have about a million more engagements with 3.9 million compared to 3 million for Hinchcliffe. This is primarily driven by posts by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk.
It might be a little early to do a final analysis of whether Biden's comments will make a difference, but from an initial look it doesn't look to be moving beyond the bubble in the way Hinchcliffe's joke did.
Target stands firm on fair pricing
Target is setting a bold example for major retailers as the holiday season approaches, with the company cutting prices on thousands of items — again.
This marks Target's second price cut initiative this year, having announced it would cut prices on 5,000 items back in May. The first price cut paid off big time, with Target seeing its sales rise for the first time in a year, resulting in a spike in public interest to coverage back in August.
But the holidays are important to consumers, and the news of another price drop has sparked even more interest among the public than it did over the summer, with recent articles earning over 100k engagements.
Recommended by LinkedIn
In terms of top coverage of Target's holiday price drop, local news outlets are driving the bulk of engagement online, with WNCT, KGET , and KTLA having the three most engaged articles, together totaling over 54k engagements.
Local outlets are propelling the story across social platforms as well, particularly on Facebook, where WNCT leads once again, earning 43k engagements to its post sharing the article. On X, More Perfect Union's post saw the most engagement, while on Instagram it was Worldstar — an entertainment and hip-hop community account — that earned over 123k engagements with its post.
Other major retailers like Walmart and Aldi have also been mentioned within this coverage for their own plans to reduce prices, but Target's commitment to fair pricing has outshined any competition so far this year, putting the brand in the spotlight in a positive way.
CIPR'S NEW CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS REPORT
Best practices for PR pros navigating the challenges of crisis comms in the age of social media
NEWSWHIP FOR CROWDTANGLE USERS
Learn about how you can continue on the work you were doing in CrowdTangle
NEWSWHIP'S ROI CALCULATOR
How NewsWhip users save an average of $100k a year
FREE ELECTIONS DIGEST
The US election stories you need to know, delivered straight to your inbox