Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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As the presidential campaign moves into the home stretch, two distinctly different groups of swing voters may well determine the outcome. Attentive swing voters — those who have followed the campaign relatively closely and are just as likely to vote as those who have made up their minds — currently favor Al Gore and strongly […]
The future of local TV news is not pretty. Of the 178 stations we have studied, 128, or 72%, have experienced overall ratings declines over three years. Twenty-six percent have added viewers. Two percent are flat. At the Radio-TV News Directors Association convention this year, news professionals were already saying that young people find little […]
Washington, D.C. Panel E.J. Dionne, The Brookings Institution Andrew Kohut, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Michael Cromartie, The Evangelical Community in American Civic Life project, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center David Devlin-Foltz, The Public Role of Mainline Protestantism project, and the Aspen Institute Alan Mittleman, Center for Jewish Community […]
Background Since the mid-1990s when the World Wide Web became a powerful part of America’s communications and information culture, there has been great concern that the nation’s racial minorities would be further disadvantaged because Internet access was not spreading as quickly in the African-American community as it was in the white community. Former Assistant Secretary […]
Part 1: An overview of the digital divide Half the adults in America (those 18 and over) do not have Internet access. That is more than 94 million people. Previous studies on the “digital divide” have highlighted the fact that those without Internet access are less well off financially and are more likely to be […]
I. Introduction The Internet is not only one of the most rapidly disseminating technologies in history, it is also—to a degree different from other mass communications technologies—rapidly evolving as it disseminates. Today’s new adopters of the Internet face a range of options undreamed of by their predecessors of just a few years ago. With higher […]
If elections are a battle for control of message through the media, George W. Bush has had the better of it on the question of character than Albert Gore Jr., according to this study of coverage leading up to the GOP convention. But the public may not be getting – or believing – the message.
Section 1: Americans want a privacy guarantee Privacy has emerged as a central policy concern about the Internet as more Americans go online every day – and recent weeks have brought a ceaseless number of new allegations about privacy violations by Internet companies. In the past three months, a series of events have heightened sensitivities. […]
In addition to regularly tracking news interest, the Pew Research Center has periodically tested the public’s knowledge of news and current events by including “information” questions on many of its surveys. These information questions are designed to provide insight into how extensively major news stories are understood and absorbed by the public. They cover a […]