Internet News Resources overtaking Traditional Media

It is not exactly surprising news. People are relying more on the news sources available on the Internet more than ever. This holds even truer for the news sources related to politics. A study has shown that newspapers are losing their shine when it comes to enticing people about news and information. Compared to 1996, people rely on news sources based on the World Wide Web around 6 times more. This study took the political news surrounding the last year’s presidential campaign in the United Sates of America as its base.

18% adults in America considered Internet to be one of the two main sources about the political news compared to just 3% back in 1996. Television based news shows also gained a little with 78% adults relying on them for news.

Newspapers have suffered the most in this turns of events. The influence of newspapers on the public has dropped down from an impressive 60% in 1996 to around 39% last year. The research was carried out through telephone-based surveys by the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Another interesting trend noticed in these surveys is the fact that web users preferred to visit general news websites like CNN and the NYTimes rather than websites or the Blogs of the candidates in the elections. News syndication networks like Yahoo! and AOL were quite popular as well, which picked up news from traditional news sources like The Associated Press and Reuters.