What Brexit tells us about how people read the news: More coverage doesn’t mean more attention and discovery channels change during a story’s lifetime

Media organizations tended to give high priority to Brexit coverage early on, but Chartbeat’s data on the thousands of stories on Brexit shows that didn’t translate into attention from readers until much later on. And, as the story evolved, the way people discovered Brexit stories changed, too. Ahead of the announcement of the results on June 24, search traffic was almost equal with social referrals, showing the “proactive inquiry of specific questions and topics.” Once the results were announced, social referrals spiked, implying that people were talking about and reacting to the results.