Americans 12 Times More interested in Miley Cyrus than Syria Debate

Even though the media has published more stories about Syria, a new study finds that more Americans care about the sexually charged antics of Miley Cyrus than about the wide-ranging debate about American military intervention in Syria.

The survey finds that the media have published 2.4 stories on Syria for every one story about Miley Cyrus, but according to Internet statistics, Americans were 12 time more interested in Miley’s infamous sex-romp performance on the VMA award show than in the debate over war with Syria.

New York Magazine reports that the review of Internet hits by the web traffic optimization service Outbrain shows that Miley ran away with web traffic in the days after her VMA award performance.

“In the three days surrounding Miley’s VMA performance and the Obama administration signaling its willingness to bomb Syria,” NYMag notes, “Outbrain’s network generated 8,104 stories about the former and 19,568 about the latter. The day after the VMAs, Miley Cyrus stories accounted for 12 percent of total U.S. page views, while Syria stories accounted for 1 percent.”

The report also found that Miley stories generated “eight times as many page views as Syria” in the days surrounding the performance in such countries as England, Australia, France, Germany, and every other nation tracked by Outbrain except Israel and Russia.