Running on the broadband

A post-election survey by Pew/Internet reports "the number of Americans using the Internet as the source of most of their political news doubled since the last mid-term election." Examining the rate of primary use of news sources (TV, newspapers, radio, Internet, magazines), the survey finds only the Internet steadily increased in popularity . The remaining sources lost in popularity: TV and newspapers the bigger losers reporting political source popularity dropping from 82% to 69% and 57% to 34% respectively, with radio rising from 12% to a high of 19% then dropping to 17%. Magazines lost a 11% popularity among voters to a low of 2%.

The survey also reported:

• 31% of Americans used the internet during the 2006 campaign to get political news and information and discuss the races through email.
• Relatively young broadband users say the internet is a more important political news source than newspapers.
• A new online political elite is emerging as 23% of campaign internet users became online political activists.
• A majority of Internet users now get political material from blogs, comedy sites, government websites, candidate sites, or alternative news sites.
• More than half of campaign Internet users cite the Internet's breadth of information and perspectives as a major reason for their online activity.

Election 2006 Online
(January 2007, pdf, 33pp/308kB)