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Retail Industry

The Net Difference

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2004 by Noah Rubin Brier

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Also noteworthy is that responses were equal on both sides of party lines. When asked, fore example, whether the Web had made them more active in politics, of the 23 percent who said yes, 10 percent planned to vote for Bush, and 10 percent for Kerry. Of the six largest political Web sites for July, one is nonpartisan, two are left-leaning and three are right-leaning. According to comScore Media Metrix, when you compare the visitors to the top two left-leaning sites and the top three right-leaning sites, the right edged out the left by just over 600,000 visitors in July. The top political Web site, AOL Elections, saw more visitors than those five sites combined, however, with over 8.4 million unique visitors during the month.

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"People who do this [visit nonpartisan political sites online] may be more undecided, independent, information seekers who want to know about both sides before they decide, and the Internet offers them an opportunity to do that," says Linda Kaid, a professor of telecommunication at the University of Florida. "People view the Internet and their ability to go out and seek other information as a possibility to provide more credible information. Information they can check."

The Bush campaign has taken an active approach on its Web site, adding tools to help those interested do everything from writing letters to the editor to organizing pro-Bush parties in their homes. "It's not only to continue to drive all of our communications efforts and spread our message, but also to reach people who are very engaged online and get them to assist the campaign," explains Michael Turk, the e-campaign director for the Bush camp. "There's also a large number of people who have dropped out of traditional media, they don't watch as much TV, they don't listen to the radio as much, but they do spend a great deal of time online. We try to reach out to those folks so that we can extend the reach of our traditional advertising," says Turk.

People spending the most time online are young voters, especially college students, one of the most "plugged-in" groups in the country. The University of Virginia's Sabato sees his students moving away from traditional media. "My students subscribe to virtually nothing and watch virtually no TV," Sabato explains. "They get almost all their news on the Internet. This tells me that in the future, most people will get most of their news from sources on the Internet. They could be televised sources on the Internet or print sources on the Internet." Trippi agrees. "If you look at what's happening with 22 year olds today, what's the more powerful medium going to be when they're 80? It's amazing how much power it does have, even today."

What the Internet may need is a single event that jump-starts the sea change. An event that tips the Internet into the mainstream as an absolutely necessary medium. For television, most people point to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963 as the point that changed TV forever. "I think it was Kennedy's assassination; all of us had the same experience of looking at this box. That was the moment where TV, after a decade of sort of being a novelty, started to own us," Trippi explains. Just when this moment will occur is something no one can pinpoint.

Retail Industry

The Net Difference

American Demographics, Oct 1, 2004 by Noah Rubin Brier

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