Yesterday, I received an email from Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist working with the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington, D. C. She let me know that Pew has just completed a national survey conducted in collaboration with the Exploratorium. It benchmarks how the Internet fits into people's habits for gathering news and information about science.
The report, compiled by John Horrigan, Associate Director & Pew researcher, finds that as a primary source for science information, the Internet is second only to television among the general population. For Americans with high-speed Internet connections at home, the Internet is as popular as TV for news and information about science. And for young adults with high-speed connections at home, the Internet is the most popular source for science news and information by a 44% to 32% margin over television.
Fully 40 million Americans use the Internet as their primary source of news and information about science and 87% of online users have at one time used the Internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept.
In conjunction with the diffusion of the Internet globally, comes the penetration of online means of information gathering in our everyday lives. Ultimately, we are being transformed by the Internet at every societal level. Our challenge as both individual Christians and corporately as the Church is to avail ourselves to use online means for evangelism, preaching, discipling, teaching & scholarship, etc.
Amanda Lenhart, Christianity online, Internet data, Pew Internet & American Life Project Pew Research
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for this interesting information. Pew seems to continually being doing a great job researching these issues.
John,
Thanks… good to hear from you again not only off-line today, but online, too.
Pew really is the foremost authority on Internet diffusion and usage (imho). Their research is now considered the vanguard by most social research institutions.
This site contains an interview with Lee Rainie, he\’s their current director, I did a few months back. I\’d give you the permalink but it would throw my comments section off. So you\’ll have to dig for it yourself if you\’re interested.
Thanks, I’ll get my shovel out and start digging.
Thanks for that and yes, Pew rock!
I’d be very interested to see a study on sports news and financial news. It wouldn’t surprise me to see these areas having died off even more substantially as most folks I talk to who track these seem almost totally net-driven these days.
man in the age of the internet, it’s good to see some good honest digging toil, well done John
Leave a Comment