News Diffusion after the Assassination of a Neighbour

In this article, data about the diffusion of news in Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Finland following the assassination of Olof Palme are presented. Special attention is given to the relation between diffusion patterns and media consumption patterns, and the relation between the importance of an event and the amount of personal communication in the diffusion process. It is argued that the significance of these two relations change with different cases of diffusion. They should therefore be interpreted as measures which reveal unique features about individual cases of news diffusion.