15 Percent of USA Adults Used Internet Most for Political News
This from the Pew Internet & American Life Project:
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.
Here is important stuff from the report for people interested in citizen media:
A new online political elite is emerging as 23% of campaign internet users became online political activists.
For the first time in our politics and the internet surveys we asked respondents whether they had created and shared political content and found:
- 8% of campaign internet users posted their own political commentary to a newsgroup, website or blog.
- 13% of them forwarded or posted someone else’s political commentary.
- 1% of them created political audio or video recordings.
- 8% of them forwarded or posted someone else’s political audio or video
In all, 23% of campaign internet users (or 11% of internet users and 7% of the entire U.S. population) had done at least one of those things. That translates into about 14 million people who were using the “read-write Web” to contribute to political discussion and activity.
The full report is available for downloading. If I get some time, I will provide more later from the full report.
