Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Summary of Findings While the 2010 midterm congressional elections dominated media coverage last week, the public focused more on news about the nation’s struggling economy. Nearly a quarter (23%) of the public says they followed news about the economy more closely than any other major story. Just 6% say they followed news about this year’s […]
When asked if they had a chance to read a daily newspaper yesterday, just 31% of Americans say they read a newspaper, the lowest percentage in two decades of Pew Research Center polling. When online news consumers are later probed separately if they happened to read anything on a newspaper website, the total rises to […]
Summary of Findings The 2010 congressional elections dominated news coverage last week, but not the public’s attention. Americans continued to focus most closely on news about the nation’s struggling economy and about four-in-ten (39%) say news reports portray the economy “about the way it really is.” Smaller, roughly equal percentages say the media make the […]
The internet is a regular news source for a majority of Americans – 57% regularly get news from at least one internet or digital source. Over the past several years, there has been a rise in the use of more traditional online technologies, like search engines, and a proliferation of new technologies, like news applications […]
In a conference call for journalists, Pew Forum staff members discussed the findings from The Future of the Global Muslim Population.
Summary of Findings No one story dominated the public’s news interest last week, as several story lines – including the debate over a mosque near Ground Zero in New York and the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs – vied for Americans’ attention. About two-in-ten (19%) say they followed the debate over plans for […]
Summary of Findings The disclosure of more than 75,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan by the website WikiLeaks garnered significant media coverage last week, and those familiar with the story were split over the effect of the leak: about equal percentages say the release harms the public interest as say it serves the […]
Executive Summary Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the […]