Mark Jurkowitz

Last week, in very large numbers, bloggers focused on a subject near and dear to their hearts -- access to the Internet.

With President Obama taking a more populist approach to health care reform, the battle over his top domestic priority was the No. 1 story for the third week in a row.

Last week, bloggers returned to the hot-button subject of gay rights, a topic that has repeatedly proven to be of more interest to commentators online than to the mainstream press.

The deep U.S. recession -- which erupted into a full-blown crisis with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 -- was the biggest story in the mainstream news media in 2009. But the media by and large did not see this coming. Attention to the economy was minimal in 2007.

With President Obama dramatically raising the stakes and investing a major chunk of political capital in the battle, the health care debate continued its resurgence in the news, topping the media agenda for the second straight week.

A warning about the potential health hazards of children chewing hot dogs triggered an impassioned backlash and registered as the top subject among bloggers last week.

Fueled by the spectacle of a televised bi-partisan meeting on the deeply polarizing issue, the health care debate re-ignited last week to dominate the news agenda.

The blogosphere last week once again fixated on one of its most popular topics, global warming, following a BBC interview with Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the so-called "Climate-gate" controversy last year.

Social media last week dove into the debate of free versus pay online content. Sparked by Warner Music's plan to favor Web sites that charge users, bloggers answered in force: It's free or we flee.

Fueled by the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus package, which offered yet another occasion for polarized debate, the U.S. economy topped the news agenda last week.