A record-breaking 46 percent of Americans have used the Web and other new media to get political news and share their thoughts about the White House campaign this year, said a survey released on Sunday.
Some 17 percent of all adults said they daily scoured political websites, read campaign e-mails and text messages, or otherwise used the Internet to keep up with the election, the survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project said.
It said that nearly 30 percent of adults have used the Internet to read or watch unfiltered campaign material -- footage of debates, position papers, announcements and transcripts of speeches.
"They want to see the full-blown campaign event. They want to read the speech from beginning to end," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew group. "It's a push back from the sound-bite culture."
Google Inc.'s YouTube and other video sites have become more popular. Thirty-five percent of adults have watched a political video online during the primary season, compared with 13 percent during the entire 2004 presidential race.
Pew also found online fundraising is up, with 6 percent of adults having contributed to a campaign using the Internet, compared with 2 percent in 2004.
And while Sen. John McCain may have been the first major presidential candidate to harness the power of the Internet for fundraising in 2000, the survey found Sen. Barack Obama is winning the online political war in 2008.
"People are using technology in more intense and enthusiastic ways for him," Lee Rainie, director of the project, said of Obama.
Pew found that among Internet users, Obama supporters were about twice as likely as backers of Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican John McCain to have made a campaign contribution online.
The study also found that 10 percent of adults have used online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace for political activity, whether it's to add a campaign as a friend on their personal profile pages, discover a friend's political interests or join an online political group.
All told, 46 percent of Americans have used the Internet or cell phone text messaging for some political activity.
Yet they have mixed views about the Internet in politics. Sixty percent of Internet users fear that misinformation and propaganda are widespread online and that too many other voters are trusting that information. And only 28 percent believe the Internet helps them feel more personally connected to the candidate they support.
The telephone study of 2,251 adults, including 1,553 Internet users, was conducted April 8 to May 11 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Source: Xinhua\agencies
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