Ben Smith Audience Graph • Social Signal

Ben Smith's top 10 neighbors are overwhelmingly fellow journalists and media publications — a tightly homogeneous cluster with scores spanning just 0.99 to 0.98, the hallmark of a flat shape. Similarity here measures how closely two entities' audiences resemble each other in composition; the narrow band across all ten neighbors means no single entity pulls distinctly ahead.

Seven of the ten are journalists: Michael Barbaro (0.99), Jay Rosen (0.99), Emily Nussbaum (0.99), Nicholas Kristof (0.99), Alex Burns (0.99), Rebecca Traister (0.98), and Brian Stelter (0.98). The remaining three are media publications: The Upshot (0.99), a news publisher, and two magazines — The New Republic (0.98) and The Atlantic: Ideas (0.98). Every neighbor, whether a byline or a masthead, sits inside the same media-and-journalism ecosystem that Ben Smith himself occupies.

The flat shape and same-kind composition together indicate an audience defined almost entirely by its engagement with professional journalism and media criticism — a cluster with no meaningful cross-category pull in the top 10.

Machine-Readable

Raw data

Attention graph /similar sample results (free):

https://graphs.socialsignal.ai/similar/benyt

{ "handle": "benyt", "title": "Ben Smith", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "resolved": "benyt", "k": 10, "shape": "flat", "filter": null, "results": [ { "handle": "mikiebarb", "title": "Michael Barbaro", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9893, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "jayrosen_nyu", "title": "Jay Rosen", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9879, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "upshotnyt", "title": "The Upshot", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "News Publishers", "similarity": 0.9859, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "emilynussbaum", "title": "Emily Nussbaum", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9855, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "nickkristof", "title": "Nicholas Kristof", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9855, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "alexburnsnyt", "title": "Alex Burns", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.985, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "newrepublic", "title": "The New Republic", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Magazines", "similarity": 0.9843, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] }, { "handle": "theatlideas", "title": "The Atlantic: Ideas", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Magazines", "similarity": 0.9843, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "J04" ] }, { "handle": "rtraister", "title": "Rebecca Traister", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9838, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "J04" ] }, { "handle": "brianstelter", "title": "Brian Stelter", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.9831, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "I01", "A01" ] } ] }

Full Attention graph /similarity /affinity /demographics available with API key:

https://graphs.socialsignal.ai/v1/attention/similar/benyt

Ben Smith

Nearest neighbors by audience shape

Raw data