[Infowarrior] - Pew Report: The internet and campaign 2006

[Richard Forno]

The internet and campaign 2006
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/135/press_release.asp

1/17/2007 | ReleaseRelease

The number of Americans who cited the internet as their primary source of
campaign news in 2006 doubled since the last mid-term election

Twice as many Americans used the internet as their primary source of news
about the 2006 campaign compared with the most recent mid-term election in
2002.

Some 15% of all American adults say the internet was the place where they
got most of their campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the
mid-term election of 2002.

A post-election survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the
Pew Research Center for The People & The Press shows that the 2006 race also
produced a notable class of online political activists. Some 23% of those
who used the internet for political purposes ­ the people we call campaign
internet users ­ actually created or forwarded online original political
commentary or politically-related videos.

³The vanguard of YouTubers and bloggers has become influential in politics,²
said Pew Internet Project Director Lee Rainie, one of the authors of the
Project¹s report on its national survey. ³Those who wish to engage voters
around a particular issue or candidate have many more tools at their
disposal today than they did just four years ago.²

Indeed, 20% of campaign internet users say they got political news and
information from blogs, while 24% say they visited issue-oriented websites.

The growing importance of the internet in the nation¹s political life is
tied at least in part to the spread of broadband connections in American
homes. Some 17% of Americans had broadband connections at home at the time
of the 2002 midterm campaign and it rose to 45% by November 2006. Younger
broadband users ­ those under age 36 ­ were more likely to cite the internet
than newspapers as their main source of political news.

³Young broadband users seem to be replacing time spent with newspapers with
time spent with online news outlets, while older broadband users go online
for political information as a supplement to other media like newspapers and
television news,² said Pew Internet¹s John Horrigan, the Associate Director
for Research and co-author of the report. ³Younger users especially
appreciate the extra information and the variety of perspectives they get
online.²

The 2006 election survey shows that convenience is the top reason people use
the internet to get political news information and that the majority of
campaign internet users go to the websites of mainstream news organizations.
At the same time, though, a majority of internet users go to non-traditional
sites such as blogs, humor and satire sites like The Daily Show,
international sites, alternative sites, candidate and government sites.

Republican and Democratic voters were equally likely to say that the
internet was their main source of election news. In contrast, there were
notable differences between Republican and Democratic voters in their
preferences for other news sources. For instance, Democratic voters were
more likely than Republicans to cite newspapers and certain broadcast and
cable news operations such as CBS, ABC and CNN as their main sources of
news, while Republicans were more likely to favor the Fox cable TV News and
radio.

These findings come from a survey of 2,562 adults, aged 18 and older. Some
200 of the completed interviews were conducted on cell phones among American
adults who only have cell phones and do not have landline phone connections.
Some 1,578 of those interviewed were internet users. The margin of error on
the full sample is +/- 2%. For results based Internet users, the margin of
sampling error is +/- 3%.

The Pew Internet Project is a non-partisan, non-profit research organization
that is an initiative of the Pew Research Center established to explore the
social impact of the internet. The Project takes no positions on policy
issues. 

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/199/report_display.asp