In this new article in Third World Quarterly, Tobias Denskus and I analyze blog and Twitter coverage of the United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a three-day event held at UN Headquarters in New York in 2010. We find that topics receiving the densest coverage mirrored existing priorities as defined by the MDGs. Although most blog entries created content which, in contrast to tweets, went beyond spreading mere factual or referential information on the event and even included some critical commentary, sustained debates did not emerge. Social media content accompanying the Summit thus reproduced global aid rituals rather than catalyzing conversations about alternative priorities for and approaches to international development. The case demonstrates that social media can serve to reinforce elite structures and discursive hegemony, which calls into doubt their recent characterization as catalysts of political change.