Back to school, back to rising costs

[View Online]( ) Back-to-school, back to rising costs With the back-to-school shopping season underway, several new surveys revealed that many parents are preparing for the financial strain of buying their child's school necessities, and even plan to take on additional debt in order to afford it. Over the last month, coverage of back-to-school costs has accumulated over 177k engagements, with the [survey results]( driving the biggest spike in public interest during the first week of August, although concerns over the [expense of school supplies]( in particular (which has [increased by 24%]( over the past four years) had been brewing well before then. Back-to-school expenses can't be avoided for many families, and major retailers like Target and Amazon are luring shoppers with special offers such as "buy now, pay later" plans and promises of lower prices. Even with these deals, back-to-school spending [ranks as the second most important shopping period]( behind the winter holidays for retailers. On X, [Tim Walz]( and [Marjorie Taylor Greene]( have earned notable engagement with their posts about the stress that back-to-school shopping brings parents, which points to this being a major issue for all Americans. Biden, Obamas, Clinton dominate DNC speaker attention so far The DNC is underway in Chicago, and the who's who of the Democratic party are each getting their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. Excluding the candidates on both tickets from this view (Harris, Trump, Vance, and Walz), who all get outsized attention due to being mentioned in most speeches, a very clear hierarchy has already emerged into who's getting attention. Using our [Top People feature]( to determine who is being written about and engaged with the most, there seem to be three tiers of attention. First, Joe Biden is well out on his own with the most media and public attention. Then there were some of the big speakers of night one and night two in the Obamas and Hillary Clinton, and finally some of the best of the rest in J.B. Pritzker, Brandon Johnson, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. All of the above have seen significantly more interest than anyone else, and attention seems to be fairly linear, with the public's interest increasing alongside the media interest. NEWSWHIP FOR CROWDTANGLE USERS Learn how NewsWhip can help replicate the work you’re doing in CrowdTangle [Learn more]( BRINGING REDDIT CONTENT TO YOUR NEWSROOM How newsrooms can leverage the often untapped resources of Reddit’s communities [Read blog]( WEBINAR: THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MONITORING Join us to learn about how journalists and newsrooms can continue their social monitoring after the shut down of CrowdTangle [Register]( JOIN US AT ONA 2024 Join us in Atlanta for Online News Association's annual conference [Register]( [Facebook (1).png]( [X (1).png]( [Linkedin (1).png]( Copyright (C) 2024 NewsWhip. All rights reserved. You're receiving this email because you opted in for the NewsWhip blog newsletter and updates. Our mailing address is: NewsWhip 42 Pearse Street Dublin, D02 YX88 Ireland Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [unsubscribe]( )