In computer news this week:

Lead: The Internet and the Iraq War

The Pew internet project - pewinternet.org - specializes in research on how people use the internet. They recently released their report on how American used the internet during the Iraq war, and here are some of their very interesting findings

TV still rules the news world, but the online news audience jumped to record levels.

The overwhelming majority of Internet users used TV to get most of their war news. In fact, of all the major forms of media, the Internet was last on the list of ways that online Americans were getting most of their news.

Still, 17% of online Americans said their principal source of information about the war was the Internet and that number was considerably higher than when PEW asked questions about how Americans were getting their news immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks. At that time, only 3% of online Americans said the Internet was their primary source of information about the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The general sentiments of Internet users

In the days the war started, U.S. Internet users supported the U.S. war effort by a 3-1 margin. Some 74% of Internet users backed the U.S. war effort and 22% opposed it. Internet users were more likely than non-users to support the war and to support the way President Bush was conducting the war. Internet users were also more likely than non-users to think that launching the war was the right decision and to think the war was going well.

More than three-quarters of online Americans (77%) used the Internet in connection with the war .

They were going online to get information about the war, to learn and share differing opinions about the conflict, to send and receive emails where they pondered events, expressed their views and offered prayers. In addition, a smaller portion of Internet users were using email to mobilize others and gain support for their views about the conflict.

In all, 55% of the nation’s 116 million adult Internet users used email in one way or another to communicate or learn about the war and 56% used the Web to get news, general information, and commentary on countless Web sites that had war related material.

More Internet users went to American television networks’ Web sites than any other news source online.

Online Vs. Traditional news sources:

Towards the end of the survey, PEW asked respondents to compare the online news environment to that of newspapers and TV. Did they think that using the Internet gave them points of view that are not available in newspapers and TV?

Even though a clear majority of Internet users said they valued the online environment because they got a variety of points of view, just 17% of Internet users said going online gave them different points of view.

Some 64% said the points of view online were pretty much the same as those in newspapers and TV.

Fully 19% of the respondents did not express an opinion – a rate of non-response that was unusually high.

So it looks to me like online news is growing, but I don't have any plans to cancel my newspaper.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

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