The National Audience Graph • Social Signal

The National's nearest audiences are podcasts, journalists, and comedians — not other news publishers. Similarity here measures how closely two entities' audiences resemble each other in composition; a score near 1.0 indicates near-identical audience shape.

The shape is flat: the top 10 neighbors fall within a tight band from 0.97 to 0.96, with no single dominant pull. Four of the ten are podcasts — Serial (0.97), This American Life (0.97), All Songs Considered (0.97), and Radiolab (0.97) — forming the densest cluster. Two journalists follow: Ira Glass (0.96) and Sam Sanders (0.96). Two comedians round out the set: Marc Maron (0.96) and Billy Eichner (0.96). Defector (0.96), a blog, and NPR Music (0.96) complete the ten. NPR Music is the only other News Publisher in the top 10; the rest of the neighbor set is drawn from adjacent but structurally distinct kinds of media and public figures.

The overall picture is an audience that moves fluidly across public-radio podcasts, longform journalism, and a specific strain of literary comedy — a coherent cultural cluster that doesn't map neatly onto any single media category.

Machine-Readable

Raw data

Attention graph /similar sample results (free):

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

{ "handle": "thenational", "title": "The National", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "News Publishers", "resolved": "thenational", "k": 10, "shape": "flat", "filter": null, "results": [ { "handle": "serial", "title": "Serial", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Podcasts and Radio", "similarity": 0.9714, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "thisamerlife", "title": "This American Life", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Podcasts and Radio", "similarity": 0.9689, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "allsongs", "title": "All Songs Considered", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Podcasts and Radio", "similarity": 0.967, "drivers": [ "A02", "G01", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "radiolab", "title": "Radiolab", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Podcasts and Radio", "similarity": 0.9662, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "iraglass", "title": "Ira Glass", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.964, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "defectormedia", "title": "Defector", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "Blogs", "similarity": 0.9628, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "nprmusic", "title": "NPR Music", "category": "Marketing Channels", "subcategory": "News Publishers", "similarity": 0.9622, "drivers": [ "G01", "G03", "A02", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "marcmaron", "title": "Marc Maron", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Comedians", "similarity": 0.9586, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "samsanders", "title": "Sam Sanders", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Journalists", "similarity": 0.958, "drivers": [ "G03", "A02", "G01", "H02", "I01" ] }, { "handle": "billyeichner", "title": "Billy Eichner", "category": "Celebrities and Influencers", "subcategory": "Comedians", "similarity": 0.9574, "drivers": [ "G01", "A02", "G03", "H02", "I01" ] } ] }

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

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

The National

Nearest neighbors by audience shape

Raw data