Internet Gains as Source of Political News

[ailsagirl]

This is encouraging

By Jay Wrolstad
NewsFactor Network
March 7, 2005 10:34AM

The number of people making political contributions online doubled to 4 million in 2004 from 2000. John Kerry's camp was busier online than George Bush's backers, says John Horrigan of Pew Research, though both were very active on the Internet.

Political news junkies flocked to the Web in 2004, looking for information about the candidates, conducting e-mail debates and lending their moral and financial support to their preferred candidates.

Those are among the conclusions drawn in a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press. Some 75 million Americans, or 37 percent of the total adult population and 61 percent of online Americans, used the Internet to get political news and information, Pew reports.

Web Eclipses Radio

The results indicate that the number of online political news consumers grew dramatically from 18 percent of the U.S. population in 2000 to 29 percent in 2004. And the number who cited the Internet as one of their primary sources of news about the presidential campaign rose to 18 percent in 2004 from 11 percent in 2000.

http://www.newsfactor.com/internetlife/story.xhtml?story_title=Report--Internet-Gains-as-Source-of-Political-News&story_id=30981&category=internetlife#story-start

[SupormomFreeAtLast]

1. When will the MSM get the message?

We want REAL news coverage!

[Old and In the Way]

2. That's amazing.

"37 percent of the total adult population and 61 percent of online Americans, used the Internet to get political news and information."

So where do the other 63% get their information? OK, a few probably are reading some very high-end, high quality news sources, but I suspect 60% are getting their news from the broadcast TV media or perhaps from a weekly newsmagazine. Pretty disinformed and pretty scary.

[radfringe]

3. somewhat related thoughts

much ado is made of bush* flying around the country and having "town hall" meetings -- while this is "portrayed" as discussions with the "little people", we know that those attending "town hall" meetings are carefully screened and questions are scripted/pre-approved

well, one area that "main-stream" media seems to be either over-looking or publically pooh-poohing are sites like the DU and even the Freep-republic

granted most web-forums tend to attract like minded people, but this is where "town-hall" meetings are taking place today. People are talking to other people, sharing information, discussing issues and sometimes taking action.

The majority of MSN-stories on political forums and blogs have been aimed at discredition of these sites. Posters and bloggers are portrayed as wearing tin-foil hats. Yet the posting and blogging goes on and more people are finding these sites and participating in them.

There are also alot of talented and intelligent people posting and blogging -- if a political party is looking to recruit then forums and blogs are the place to look