Presidential Elections 2008/Chapter 7: The role of the media and the people
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People's reaction (by Rebecca)
As per statistics, Barack Obama is the most popular US President candidate in Germany and the Netherlands.
His rival, John McCain, ist outside of Europe the people's favorite.
Below some comments to the presidential elections:
Fidel Castro: The American society was marked by profound racism, it was a pure miracle that Barack Obama has been not assassinated.
Millions of white cannot reconcile in their minds with the idea that a black man with his wife and children would move into the White House, which is called just like that - White.
Mr Castro's comment is like a war of words with undertones against racism in america and the presidential election. He accuses John McCain of sowing hatred against Obama.
The role of paper (by Heiko)
The papers are very important for the presidential election. The papers keep the people up to date, and they get much information about the two candidates and their aims. But the newspapers can also influence the elections, for example if somebody always reads the same paper and this paper writes just good things about one canditate and bad things or nothing about the other candidate, the reader will vote for the candidate, who is “praised”.
The role of TV (by Hendrik)
The television is very important because the American's can see how Obama and McCain react in front of a camera. When they're fighting live everyone can see if they're real or just fake. The TV has got a big influence on the voters and Obama/McCain know how to use it. They know that every word they say is shown on TV in the evening or even at the moment. Every single picture is shown on TV and millions watch it every day, so they have to be careful whom they meet. Another point is that some people take the video strip and cut it to make other people a bad opinion about McCain/Obama.
Main Source: TV on Top, But Slipping (by Robert M.)
Despite the growth of the internet for campaign news, television remains the public's main source for such information. However, television is not as dominant as at once was: 60% say they get most of their news about the presidential election from television (local, cable and network outlets combined), down from 68% at comparable points in the 2004 and 2000 campaigns.
By this measure, the internet is still a secondary news source. Only 15% of Americans say they get most of their news about the election online, although that figure has more than doubled since 2004 (from 6%).
Overall, 26% of Americans mention the internet either first or second as their main source of election news. Among young people, the internet is eroding television's advantage as a main source for election news. Six-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 cite television as their main source for election news, down from 75% four years ago. Over that time, the proportion citing the internet has more than doubled – from 21% to 46%.
Internet's Broader Role in Campaign 2008 (by Robert M.)
The internet is living up to its potential as a major source for news about the presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they regularly learn something about the campaign from the internet, almost double the percentage from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%).
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Moreover, the internet has now become a leading source of campaign news for young people and the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story. Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source. In January 2004, just 20% of young people said they routinely got campaign news from the internet.
The quadrennial survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Internet & American Life Project on campaign news and political communication, conducted Dec. 19-30 among 1,430 adults, shows that the proportion of Americans who rely on traditional news sources for information about the campaign has remained static or declined slightly since the last presidential campaign. Compared with the 2000 campaign, far fewer Americans now say they regularly learn about the campaign from local TV news (down eight points), nightly network news (down 13 points) and daily newspapers (down nine points). Cable news networks are up modestly since 2000, but have shown no growth since the 2004 campaign.
By contrast, the proportion of Americans who say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet has more than doubled since 2000 – from 9% to 24%. National Public Radio is the only other news source to show significant growth since 2000; currently 18% say they regularly learn about the campaign from NPR, up from 12% eight years ago.
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With more young people going online for campaign information, the age gap in campaign news sources has widened. As was the case in 2004, older Americans are more likely than younger people to learn about the campaign from many traditional news sources, particularly local TV news, Sunday TV political programs, nightly network news, and newspapers. The internet is the only major news source that young people use for campaign news at higher rates than older Americans – and this gap has more than doubled since 2004.
People who rely on the internet for campaign news turn to a wide array of websites. The most frequently mentioned online news outlets are MSNBC (at 26%), CNN (23%) and Yahoo News (22%). However, numerous other outlets also receive mentions, including non-traditional sources of campaign information; 3% each say they go to the Drudge Report or MySpace, while 2% specifically mention YouTube as a site where they get campaign news.
In this regard, substantial numbers of young people say they have gotten information on the campaign or the candidates from social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Overall, more than a quarter of those younger than age 30 (27%) – including 37% of those ages 18-24 – have gotten campaign information from social networking sites. This practice is almost exclusively limited to young people; just 4% of Americans in their 30s, and 1% of those ages 40 and older, have gotten news about the campaign in this way.
At a time when a declining number of young people rely on television for most of their news about the campaign, a sizable minority are going online to watch videos of campaign debates, speeches and commercials. Roughly four-in-ten people under age 30 (41%) have watched at least one form of campaign video online, compared with 20% of those ages 30 and older.
However, even as the variety of campaign web information resources has expanded, there are indications that most internet users do not go online for the sole purpose of learning about the campaign. Rather, a majority of web users (52%) say they "come across" campaign news and information when they are going online to do something else. This practice is particularly prevalent among younger web users: 59% of web users under age 30 come across campaign news online compared with 43% of those ages 50 and older.
