Internet rises as source of political news and information at expense of mainstream media

Social networking and online video are emerging as major sources of political news, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press.

Almost one-quarter of Americans says they regularly learn abut campaigns from the Internet. That's almost double what Pew found in 2004.

Moreover, 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 report says traditional sources of news and information, like TV and newspapers, showed no growth or receded in importance.

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.

The only pre-Internet news source showing growth from the last presidential election cycle? You guessed it: public radio.

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.

One could be tempted to conclude that the news-consuming public does not see public radio as part of mainstream media.

The top three sources of political news on the Internet, according to Pew, are MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News, in that order.

Each is cited by roughly a quarter of those who get campaign news online at least sometimes, and collectively, 54% cite at least one of these three websites.

Other widely used websites include Google News (named by 9% of those who get campaign news online), Fox News (9%), AOL News (7%) and the New York Times website (6%). Other commercial websites mentioned by at least 1% are the Drudge Report (3%), BBC (2%) and the USA Today and Washington Post websites (1% each).

Despite all the work presidential candidates put into their Web sites, only eight percent of Americans say they get information on these sites. Much more important are social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, especially for younger people.

Fully two-thirds of Americans age 18-29 say they use social networking sites, and more than a quarter in this age group (27%) say that they have gotten information about candidates and the campaign from them – including 37% among those ages 18-24. Nearly one-in-ten of people under age 30 (8%) say that they have signed up as a "friend" of one of the candidates on a site. And the numbers are even higher for each of these activities among young registered voters.

The Pew report also chronicles the rising importance of Internet video. Regarding the YouTube effect:

Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they have seen something about the campaign in a video online – either a speech, interview, commercial, or debate. For each of these four types of videos, approximately 12-13% of those surveyed report seeing it online. Among younger respondents, the numbers are even higher. Fully 41% of those under age 30 have viewed at least one type of video. Fewer older respondents have seen some type of campaign video online, but even among those ages 65 and older, 7% have done so.