Internet overtakes newspapers as main source of campaign news

[Cross-posted on Berkman’s Internet & Democracy blog]

There were many firsts in this 2008 election cycle: amongst them the pivotal role played by the Internet in engaging voters, raising funds and organizing volunteers and party supporters. But the most striking trend to emerge was that the Internet has overtaken newspapers as the main source where people look for campaign news.

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press (full report here) has looked at the different media sources where people look for campaign information between October 2004 and 2008. According to the poll:

–    the percentage of respondents who reports turning to the Internet as their first or second choice for getting campaign information has tripled between 2004 and 2008 from 10% to 33% (a staggering 23 percentage point change).

–    At the same time the percentage of people who mention newspapers as their first or second choice for getting campaign news has remained stable at 29% between 2004 and 2008.

TV remains the most prominent source of campaign information. What is striking, however, is that especially amongst young people the Internet is largely the new place where to go and look for political news. 49% of 18-29 year olds and 37% of 30-49 year olds turned to the Internet compared to 29% of 50-64 year olds and 12% of the over 65. For newspapers we see the exact opposite trend: only 17% of 18-29 year olds and 23% of 30-49 year olds looked for campaign news in newspapers (both percentages below the general population average), compared to 34% of 50-64 year olds and 45% of over 65.

Clearly these data show that it is not only ‘digital natives’ who are turning increasingly to new media to get their political information. The 30-49 age group is also choosing technology over more ‘traditional’ sources of information, suggesting that an important transformation is taking place in news consumption habits. This is certainly aided by the increasing attention paid to new technologies by campaign strategists – but also by the growing bottom-up participation encouraged by blogs, social networking sites and interactive features of online news sites.

Is the Internet making a difference to the 2008 election?

[Cross-posted on Berkman’s Internet & Democracy blog]

A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal/NBC/MySpace of newly registered voters and lapsed voters has shown that the Internet keeps playing an important role in the current campaign, especially amongst younger people; however, the effect which online news will have on actual voter turnout remains to be seen.

Newly registered voters are those who either registered for the first time, or who skipped the 2004 election and have now registered again. The sample is thus overwhelmingly made up of young people (three quarters).

The survey shows some interesting findings on the use of new media to access and share information about the campaign by new voters compared to the population of all voters. While accessing information online was pretty similar amongst the two groups: 36% of new voters visited an official candidate’s website compared to 33% of all voters;28% of new voters watched a YouTube video on the campaign compared to 22% of all voters – active information sharing was higher amongst new voters: 25% of new voters sent an SMS message regarding the campaign compared to 16% of all voters; 21% of new voters joined an online social networking group for the campaign via either MySpace or Facebook compared to only 8% of all voters.

These data supports the idea that online social networking sites and Web 2.0 applications are facilitating or enhancing young people’s participation in politics; however, whether this will translate into offline participation is a question which remains to be tested. Offline participation in a rally or demonstration to support a candidate was very low amongst both new voters (5%) and all voters (9%).  Similarly, volunteering for the campaign was also pretty low amongst both groups (6% of new voters vs. 9% of all voters). Furthermore, when asked about how interested respondents were about the upcoming election, 49% of new voters said they were very interested compared to 70% of all voters, and only 54% said they will definitely vote.

The question which remains to be asked is the following: is online campaigning and activism replacing old fashioned, face-to-face door-to-door campaigning? And if so, is it qualitatively different and what will this mean for the democratic process? Stay tuned.

Full report and commentary available here.

US elections 2008: 5 friends viral video

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vtHwWReGU0[/youtube]

Half a million views in one day, and a very clever link to Google maps where you can enter your address details to check where you can register to vote in your area, if you haven’t already done so, and your deadline for you to do that.

The Internet: politics as usual?

With the primaries in full swing and the upcoming elections, one cannot but ponder what role new technologies such as the Internet are playing in facilitating citizens’ engagement in the political process. Is the Internet actually making a difference?

The Internet has certainly lowered the barriers of participation – if one wants to get involved, there are numerous arguably low cost ways to do so. Social networking sites such as Facebook allow users to join groups or become supporters of one’s favorite politician. Political satire DIY videos abound on YouTube, from the downright entertaining to the more engaged ones. Finally, there is a series of innovative websites, for example Scoop08, VoteGopher and Generation Engage, which are entirely made up of user generated content allowing (especially young) people to voice their opinions and engage in political discussion.

But does online political participation matter if it does not eventually translate into some tangible offline outcome such as for example turnout at the ballots or door to door canvassing? To put it in other words, is the online participatory culture promoted by the Internet meaningful in itself – if it does not translate into a (offline) participatory democracy? Similarly, does offline political participation which was originated online matter if it is only short term and episodic (for example taking part in a protest organized on Facebook)? Is one off participation as valuable as long term commitment to a cause? After all, some of the most successful online ventures such as MoveOn.org and MeetUp.com can ascribe a big part of their accomplishments to the fact that they are rooted in local communities and offline social networks.

It is being argued that the Internet is really making a difference for young people’s political engagement. There is some evidence that the current generation of 18-24 year olds is more civically engaged than previous generations of young people. While it can be argued that Web 2.0 tools, from social networking sites to YouTube are the domain of the young, can we safely assume that it is the Internet which is playing a major role in engaging young people in the political process? How do we isolate the impact of the Internet from other exogenous factors such as the war in Iraq, the years of the Bush administration, or the 9/11 attacks as political scientist Robert Putnam has recently claimed?

While the Dean campaign was greeted as the first Internet election, online fundraising was the main feature of the novelty. Much has changed since then, thanks to the new opportunities for involvement provided by Web 2.0 tools. Unfortunately, studying these new trends is often fraught with methodological difficulties: how can we quantify the aggregate effect of the thousands of videos uploaded on YouTube; or of the scattered conversations and strategic planning which takes place online on politicians websites, users’ blogs and Facebooks groups? Perhaps the most important question to be asked is whether and how the Internet is contributing to the empowerment of individuals – as political efficacy and political trust are necessary conditions for becoming involved in the political process.

The Internet is first source of campaign news for young Americans

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press has just released a new survey on the role of the Internet in the 2008 US campaign. The report shows that almost half (42%) of 18 to 29 year olds learns regularly about the campaign from the Internet, double the number in the 2004 campaign (20%). The age divide between young and older people in looking for campaign information online has also doubled since 2004 from 13 percentage points in 2004 to 27 percentage points in 2008 (it should be noted though that the proportion of 30 to 49 year olds and 50 year olds and older turning to the Internet has also grown since 2004, although not as dramatically as amongst 18 to 29 year olds – showing that the Internet is increasingly becoming a source of political information amongst the general population, even though it is still lagging behind TV and daily newspapers).

The Pew findings also show that traditional online news websites such as MSNBC, CNN and Yahoo remain the most visited sites for political information seeking, but amongst young people 37% of 18 to 24 year olds (and 27% of those younger than 30) have gotten campaign information from social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook (compared to 4% of those in their thirties and 1% of those 40 and older), showing how these online spaces have become an important space not only for entertainment but also for more civic minded activities. Two caveats, though….

…there’s a feeling amongst pundits and young people themselves (as many of the young people we interviewed for our Digital Natives project voiced) that membership in political groups on Facebook is so low cost that it is actually meaningless: joining a candidate’s group is like putting a bumber sticker of your favourite candidate on your car. But does this translate into actual offline participation/higher voting turnout? Also, Pew reports that 59% of web users under the age of 30 have come across campaign news online while they were actually looking for something else. Is this kind of exposure better than no exposure at all? Should we consider as political engagement only the one that is costly and face to face, like canvassing and campaigning door to door in the rain or is this exposure to online news a good starting point?

(cross-posted in Digital Natives blog)

Beppe Grillo and the power of the Web

Yesterday the New York Times published an article on Italy and its current political malaise and a very good video on the Beppe Grillo phenomenon – Beppe Grillo, comic, now blogger (after being banned from television for his political satire) has managed to rally together a new political movement of people who are disaffected with the current government and the social and political situation. Grillo himself states that his popularity is entirely due to the Web – his blog is the most popular blog in Italy, and it is certainly more popular than the blogs of those politicians who have an online presence (the NYT reports Grillo’s blog is the tenth most linked to blog in the entire world). The Beppe Grillo’s movement has spawned Meetup.com groups all over the world: Beppe Grillo Meetups now count 68,000 members in 27 countries with 7,000 events organised so far. While critics argue that Beppe Grillo’s political actions are more ‘destructive’ than ‘constructive’ and hence not conducive to political dialogue and reform, there is no doubt that the Beppe Grillo phenomenon is a clear testimony to the power of the Web for political mobilization. Whether this movement will lead to political change and other political outcomes is a different matter – certainly this critical mass of people would not have come together if it wasn’t for Grillo’s web presence – and this is even more significant when considering that Italy has one of the lowest rates of Internet adoption and use in Europe.

Italy and the end of the Internet?

The Italian Government has recently proposed a draft law aimed at reorganising the legislation of the publishing sector, which requires every citizen engaging in publishing and editorial activities to register them with a central registry. This law covers different media, including the Internet, in practice requiring every Internet user who posts information online (thus carrying out “publishing and editorial activity”) to register their blogs and websites with such a registry. This law would in fact identify bloggers as professional publishers/journalists – thus, bloggers who fail to register would in theory be liable to incur into heavy penalties such as for example defamation.

As news of the draft law have started to circulate, thousands of angry reactions have been flooding into two of the most popular Italian blogs: Beppe Grillo’s blog and Minister Antonio Di Pietro’s blog (one of the first and most active politician bloggers) protesting that the passing of such a law, far from being a mere bureaucratic formality, would in fact mean the end of the free Internet in Italy. Government officials have clarified that such a law would not apply to personal blogs and amateur sites, but no clear guidelines have been stated so far to qualify what counts as a personal vs. professional blog.

The original text of the draft law can be found here [Italian only].

Update: Minister of Communications Paolo Gentiloni on his blog has just commented on the draft law stating that the law should not apply to blogs and personal websites, but only to online professional publishers, such as big online newspapers. This draft law will have to be discussed in Parliament and several parties, from the Greens to Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori party, have promised to oppose such a law.

Towards civic media? Teaching digital natives how to use web 2.0 tools

[youtube width=”315″ height=”235″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXaT1Ty6JTY[/youtube]

As discussions about the digital divide have been slowly fading into the background (in spite of the persistent inequalities in Internet adoption both between and within countries), the new focus has been shifting on the inequalities in the way the Internet is used by drawing attention to the media skills (or media literacy) which are necessary for citizens to become meaningfully involved online (and thus offline).

As web 2.0 technologies are developing and maturing it is not sufficient anymore to merely observe digital natives (those who are born with the new digital technology and have most successfully integrated it into their everyday lives) and how they are creating online content but it becomes necessary to engage them in meaningful ways so that the incredible potential of Web 2.0 does not remain confined to uploading funny pictures of your cat.

Initiatives such as the one by Prof. Alexandra Juhasz of Pitzer College, CA, “Learning from YouTube” show how teaching digital natives how to use tools such as YouTube will help the development of media skills which should contribute not only to better quality content online but also to more meaningful uses of these online tools so that new media can move from just being entertainment to being also truly civic media.

Oxford Internet Survey 2007

OxIS 2007 reportThe Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford has just released its 2007 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) report – covering findings and trends comparing the 2003, 2005 and 2007 surveys.

You can download the report here and you can read the BBC press coverage the report has received here. The OxIS surveys are national representative surveys of Internet adoption and use in Britain – they are part of the World Internet Project (WIP), which compares Internet adoption and use across 25 countries.

e-democracy second life style

Itching for statistics, insights and data on the use of second life for political and educational purposes – who are the people who tune in? probably the usual suspects – but what do they think about the whole process? is the technology living up to their expectations? are these online forums a valuable form of consultation for both users and politicians? is this just a fad, or is this a trend which is here to stay? what is its real impact on the political process?
[youtube width=”315″ height=”235″]http://youtube.com/watch?v=UhA9xJvinvk[/youtube]

(This is a video from Internet-savvy Italian politician Antonio di Pietro which provides the highlights of the first second life meeting of his party Italia dei Valori with journalists and the public – in his opening speech he equates the event to the “agorà of ancient Greece” – the video is in Italian only, but it is an interesting look behind the scenes – for a commentary in english check out his blog)