Although the news would be of no surprise to anyone of voting age, according to The Pew Research Center the Internet has become a major source of election news second only to TV. The numbers look something like this - 72%, 33%, 29% for TV, Internet, and newspapers. The TV ranking is skewed though - as David Weinberger, the author and Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society says on his blog -
"This can be slightly misleading, though. For me â€" and I am confident that I am 100% typical of people who are like me â€" the only election news I get directly through TV comes through The Daily Show and Colbert. Otherwise, the ecology of news works like this: Someone posts a bit of news on some site. That snippet may well come from a mainstream source, or it may not. But like a greasy crumb dropped on the sidewalk, it's instantly swarmed by ants. The ants â€" that's you and me, sister â€" point at it, link to it, explain it, deny it, make fun of it, connect it with something else, and send it or what we've made of it around the world. The morsel is gone, digested, appropriated. The ants are the media. The mainstream are only noticed if they're doing as good a job at being a news ant as the rest of us."
And as you might expect the cable TV shows garner a highly partisan audience -
Among those who name the Fox News Channel as their main source for campaign news, 52% are Republicans and only 17% are Democrats. By contrast, among those who rely on MSNBC for their campaign news, 50% are Democrats and only 11% are Republicans. Similarly, CNN's campaign news audience is largely Democratic â€" 45% are Democrats and 13% are Republicans.