Internet’s broader role in campaign 2008

The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign, According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost the double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).

The internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.

The quadrennial survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project on campaign news and political communication, conducted Dec. 19-30 among 1,430 adults, shows that the proportion of Americans who rely on traditional news sources for information about the campaign has remained static or declined slightly since the last presidential campaign. Compared with the 2000 campaign, far fewer Americans now say they regularly learn about the campaign from local TV news (down eight points), nightly network news (down 13 points) and daily newspapers (down nine points). Cable news networks are up modestly since 2000, but have shown no growth since the 2004 campaign.

By contrast, the proportion of Americans who say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet has more than doubled since 2000 – from 9% to 24%. National Public Radio is the only other news source to show significant growth since 2000; currently 18% say they regularly learn about the campaign from NPR, up from 12% eight years ago.

With more young people going online for campaign information, the age gap in campaign news sources has widened. As was the case in 2004, older Americans are more likely than younger people to learn about the campaign from many traditional news sources, particularly local TV news, Sunday TV political programs, nightly network news, and newspapers. The internet is the only major news source that young people use for campaign news at higher rates than older Americans – and this gap has more than doubled since 2004.

People who rely on the internet for campaign news turn to a wide array of websites. The most frequently mentioned online news outlets are MSNBC (at 26%), CNN (23%) and Yahoo News (22%). However, numerous other outlets also receive mentions, including non-traditional sources of campaign information; 3% each say they go to the Drudge Report or MySpace, while 2% specifically mention YouTube as a site where they get campaign news.

In this regard, substantial numbers of young people say they have gotten information on the campaign or the candidates from social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Overall, more than a quarter of those younger than age 30 (27%) – including 37% of those ages 18-24 – have gotten campaign information from social networking sites. This practice is almost exclusively limited to young people; just 4% of Americans in their 30s, and 1% of those ages 40 and older, have gotten news about the campaign in this way.

At a time when a declining number of young people rely on television for most of their news about the campaign, a sizable minority are going online to watch videos of campaign debates, speeches and commercials. Roughly four-in-ten people under age 30 (41%) have watched at least one form of campaign video online, compared with 20% of those ages 30 and older.

However, even as the variety of campaign web information resources has expanded, there are indications that most internet users do not go online for the sole purpose of learning about the campaign. Rather, a majority of web users (52%) say they “come across” campaign news and information when they are going online to do something else. This practice is particularly prevalent among younger web users: 59% of web users under age 30 come across campaign news online compared with 43% of those ages 50 and older.