The Internet became even more ingrained in American politics during the 2008 campaign with nearly three-quarters of web users going online to look for news and information or to communicate with others about politics, according to the Pew Research Center which gathered the data between Nov. 20 and Dec. 4 of last year.
That number represents 55 percent of the adult population and Pew says this was the first time that more than half of the voting age population went online to connect to politics during an election cycle.
Six in 10 used the internet to get news or information about the campaign, representing 44 percent of all adults, and nearly one-fifth did so on a daily basis.
Pew found that politically-active internet users are gravitating towards sites that share their points of view rather than news sites that do traditional journalism. The number of users joining that trend grew from 26 percent in 2004 to 33 percent last year. Forty-four percent of Democratic online users said they visit politically like-minded sites, up from 34 percent in 2004, and 35 percent of Republicans do the same, up from 26 percent in 2006.
But this trend was most pronounced among younger users among whom 43 percent visited sites that shared their views, up from 22 percent in 2004.
How did people communicate with each other the most when it came to sharing views on politics?
Well, even though you might not think so from watching all the people next to you texting away, those who talked to people in person topped the list at 59 percent, followed by those who used the telephone at 45 percent. Eleven percent did so by email, 8 percent by text messages, 4 percent by posting their experience on a social networking site, 4 percent by posting a comment on a website or blog and 2 percent by writing their thoughts on their own blogs.
![[RSS]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/rss_icon.gif){kind=icon}
![[ARCHIVES]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/archives_icon.png){kind=icon}
Post A Comment