Justin Bieber Less Popular Than Occupy Wall Street On Twitter

The Occupy Wall Street movement topped Justin Bieber as the most popular story on Twitter, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Despite the teen heartthrob's over 14 million Twitter followers, Occupy Wall Street was the top story on Twitter between October 24 and 28, followed by Bieber, who has made the New Media Index charts three times in the last five weeks. Steve Job's death, the news of which broke October 6, came in third and the 2012 presidential elections ranked fourth.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was the third most popular news story on blogs (Bieber didn't make the cut!) and the New Media Index notes that the protests "inspired very different conversations on blogs and Twitter."

"On Twitter, the tone was markedly pro-protestor, with Twitter users sharing images and videos of police using tear gasduring protests in Oakland," wrote the New Media Index in its report.

Recent analysis by Google found that search interest in Occupy Wall Street had waned slightly from its peak on October 15.

An NMIncite study released October 19 concluded that social media "buzz" about Occupy Wall Street "reached its peak on October 6th with 13,133 messages being posted in one day," though the New Media Index's findings suggest conversations about the movement are up again on Twitter.

Bieber enjoys such high popularity on Twitter that employees at the social media company have joked that the star has his own servers.

"At any moment, Justin Bieber uses 3% of our infrastructure. Racks of servers are dedicated to him. - A guy who works at Twitter," tweeted Dustin Curtis last year.