British journalists tweeted more about the Leveson inquiry into press standards than the Eurozone crisis or the Syrian revolution in the final quarter of 2011, according to the latest survey of 340,000 tweets by PR firm Portland.

Fleet Street's obsession with itself is alive and well, according to the study, with the Leveson inquiry, which began witness hearings in November, by far the most tweeted-about topic in the three-month period. Among the tweets covered by Portland NewsTweet Index, 4,207 were about the Leveson inquiry by UK journalists, compared with 3,230 on the Eurozone crisis.

In what is the second quarterly Portland NewsTweet Index, digital editor of Sky News has also been dislodged as the most influential journalist on Twitter.

Neal Mann, better known as @fieldproducer, who topped the first index based on a study of 330,000 tweets between July and September, has been replaced at the top by Paul Waugh, editor of PoliticsHome.com.

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