Political Internet Use Doubles Since '02
Internet use for political information has doubled since 2002, according to a new Pew Research study (PDF here) conducted 11/8 to 12/4. As Lynn Rainey and John Horrigran report in their article "The Internet Is Creating a New Class of Web-Savvy Political Activists":
The number of Americans who got most of their information about the 2006 campaign on the internet doubled from the most recent mid-term election in 2002 and rivaled the number from the 2004 presidential election...15% of all American adults say the internet was their primary source for campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002 and close to the 18% of Americans who said they relied on the internet during the presidential campaign cycle in 2004.
In addition, 31 percent of respondents --- representing 60 million people -- said they used the internet to get political information in 2006. The study also identifies the type of websites being most frequently visited by political internet users, reporting, for example, that 20 percent read political blogs. Interestingly, the survey of 2,562 adults included 200 respondents who had cell phones only.
For more on political internet users, see Emerging Democratric Majority's January 20 post.
Comments
The key question seems to be how politically savvy these activists turn out to be - how can they reach out to potential sympathisers, undecided voters and the like, how can they sustain their operations, how can they promote their cause? Many campaign managers seems to be fighting the last war with blogs and online fund-raising as the 'hot new thing', and at best a reach out to meetups to actually generate some activism - but organizations like the liberal MoveOn and the conservative Townhall.com shows the promise of so much more - the question of Internet campaining today is who can build a self-sustaining political and participatory media platform that makes it possible for people to actually do something - this is yet to be done in the early stages of a race where most of the candidates still seem to live in the late nineties (more on http://participations.wordpress.com).
Posted by: Rasmus Nielsen | February 3, 2007 06:33 PM