Washington – The Internet has become such a force in politics that 30 million Americans used it as their primary source of campaign information last fall, more than twice as many as during the 2002 midterm elections, according to a study released Wednesday.
The nonpartisan Pew Internet Project found that in the run-up to the November election, 15 percent of U.S. adults relied upon the Internet as their No. 1 provider of political information, up from 7 percent, or just 14 million Americans, in the 2002 election.
Among adults younger than 36, the trend was even clearer: more than a third saw the Internet as their main source of political news, the report said.
To be sure, television remains the nation’s chief news provider.
On any given day in November, 61 percent of Americans watched a TV news program, 38 percent read a newspaper and 21 percent turned to the Internet for news.
But John Horrigan, an author of the study based upon phone interviews with a sample of 2,562 adults, said Internet use is gaining rapidly, even among devoted TV and newspaper fans.
“For political news, the Internet is an important supplement for a fairly substantial swath of Americans,” he said.
Among those who turned to the Internet for 2006 political news, 60 percent used news portals, such as Google News or Yahoo News, or TV network websites, such as CNN.com or ABCNews.com. Only 31 percent chose the websites of national newspapers, such as USA Today or the New York Times.
The study also confirmed that Americans have been seeking more input from nontraditional sources. Just over half of Internet users got some of their campaign information from comedy sites, blogs, candidates’ sites and other alternative news sites.
“Young people with high- speed access are forming habits that more and more include the Internet,” rather than traditional news sources, Horrigan said.
Internet users say getting news online is more convenient and allows them to get information not readily available elsewhere.
While differences between younger and older Americans can be pronounced, Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to declare the Internet their No. 1 source of election news, the study found.
The report concluded that the Internet’s role is growing because high-speed connections are making searches faster. When Pew first started doing Internet surveys in 2000, only about 3 percent of Americans had broadband service at home; today about 43 percent do. At the same time, users’ savvy has grown.
Still, the Internet doesn’t reach deeply into poorer sectors of the electorate. The study found the typical person seeking online political information was a white male college graduate with broadband service.
The survey’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Horrigan said that in coming elections, the Internet could play an important role as a video distributor. With the aid of video-sharing websites such as YouTube, individuals were able to call attention to political blunders in 2006. For example, Sen. George Allen, R-Va., was caught on tape calling a dark-skinned man a “macaca” during a campaign event. He lost his re-election bid.
