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The Young and Agenda-less? Exploring Age-related Differences in Agenda Setting on the Youngest Generation, Baby Boomers, and the Civic Generation
Renita Coleman and Maxwell McCombs Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 2007 84: 495 DOI: 10.1177/107769900708400306 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/84/3/495

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THE YOUNG AGENDA-LESS? AND EXPLORING AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES

IN AGENDA SETTING O N THE YOUNGEST GENERATION, BOOMERS, BABY AND THE CIVIC GENERATION
By Renifa Coleman and Maxwell McCombs
This study examined agenda-setting differences between those aged 18 to
34 and two older generations. Using two surveys with statewide random

samples and content analyses for each, it found that the agenda of issues important to young adults was correlated with the medias issue agenda (rho= .SO and .go). For the heaviest Internet users, who were more likely to be in the two youngest age groups, the correlation was .70. Although the youngest generation used traditional media such as newspapers and television significantly less frequently than older generations, and used the Internet significantly more often, this differential media use did not eliminate the agenda-setting influence.
Every new generation of young adults is different from the one that came before, and todays is no exception. One of the most pronounced differences among generations is media use; younger people today say they get their news from non-traditional sources such as The . Daily Show and the Internet2more often than from traditional sources such as newspapers and television. One possible consequence of these generational differences in media use is a diminished agenda-setting effect on the young.3 Thanks to more diverse news sources, there are many more agendas now, all easily available online and in alternative media popular with the young. An alternative view is that conglomeration and synergy nonetheless keep the agenda of issues redundant, even among these seemingly diverse ~ources.~ study found that online users take issues from One traditional media and pass them on in Internet discussion^.^ Another found that blogs covered the 2004 election issues in the same way as the mainstream media,6 so it would not be surprising to find that young adults agendas do match those of their older cohorts. There is little current empirical evidence to support either view; the purpose of this study is to explore that question.
Renita Coleman is an assistant professor and Maxwell McCombs is the Jesse H . Jones Centennial Professor in the School offournalism, University of Texas-Austin.
p M c~ ~ ~ Vol. 84, No. 3 Autumn 2007 495-508 02007AEJMC

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The study seeks to understand generational differences in agendasetting influences. Although research has explored various characteristics of the audience that mediate agenda-setting effects, little has been done to document the role of generational differences. Studying the younger generation's agenda of issues grows more important as non-traditional news increases in popularity and these young adults mature to become society's leaders.

Literature ~~~i~~

Agenda Setting. Agenda setting describes the process by which the mass media select and concentrate on certain issues, leading people to perceive those issues as more important than others. The core concept in agenda-setting theory is the transfer of issue salience, how media emphasis on certain issues raises their salience in public ~ p i n i o n .Salience is ~ "the degree to which an issue is perceived as relatively important"s based on its relationship to other issues in the media. Hundreds of studies have examined this effect with the vast majority documenting the idea that media coverage influences the perceived importance of issues. Since the seminal agenda-setting study,y research has investigated the contingent conditions of agenda setting. Numerous studies have found that individual differences matter; agenda setting does not operate the same way for everyone.'O Generational differences may be one characteristic that mediates the agenda-setting effect and, if so, should be incorporated into the theory for a fuller understanding of the contingent conditions that help explain it. Although most of the survey components in agenda-setting studies measure age as one of the standard demographic items, age typically is used only to describe the sample of people interviewed and is not included in the analysis of the agenda-setting process. Only two studies, one in North Carolina and a replication in Spain, have analyzed age. Both" found increased consensus among younger and older citizens regarding the public agenda with increased exposure to news media. Several explanations for lack of attention to agenda-setting effects related to age come to mind, in particular an emphasis in agenda-setting research on a variety of individual characteristics more functionally relevant to public affairs and political behavior than demographic differences, such as interest in politics, specific campaign interest, political partisanship, and need for orientation.'* Using age as a surrogate for sensitivity to crime, Erbring and colleag~es'~ find stronger agenda-setting did effects for the issue of crime among older members of the public, but other surrogates were used for the other issues in that study. It is also important to understand generational differences in the influence of agenda setting because the concept of democracy assumes that citizens are concerned and knowledgeable about social and political issues. Agenda setting is an important media function because it focuses the public's attention on a key set of issues. People cannot operate efficiently without some level of consensus on what issues need to be addressed, and the number of issues a government and public can address at any one time is limited.I4 With increasing exposure to media, different demographic groups show greater agreement about the salience
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of issues on the public agenda.15 Studies generally find that level of media exposure correlates with agenda-setting effects.16 Media Use and Young Adults. There is considerable evidence of age differences in use of traditional media.17 Polls show the percentage of 18- to 30-year-oldswho regularly watch television news can be as low as 22%.18 Several studies show that younger people read newspapers and watch TV news less than older generations, and watch entertainment media more.I9 Older people are significantly more likely to use newspapers, TV news, and magazines for their information than are younger Numerous studies have blamed the decline in newspaper reading among younger cohorts on electronic media including the Internet.2I What type of media one uses is important because, generally, newspapers are found to have stronger agenda-setting effects than television.22This evidence leads to the first prediction:
H1: The younger generation, those between 18 and 34 years old, will have significantly lower levels of traditional media use than older generations.

Research on age-related differences in media use has focused primarily on Internet ~ s e . 2 ~ Digital divide studies examining age effects found that people older than 65 had much less Internet access than those younger than 30.24 Most 20- or 30-somethings considered the Internet the most-useful information source available, surpassing newspapers, television news, and magazines.25While the age range of Internet users is growing, generational differences in media use still exist, with the Internet being favored by younger Those born between 1977 and 1997 are the first generation to grow up surrounded by home computers, video games, and the Internet. These children of the Baby Boomers say the Internet is their medium of Given this evidence, the second prediction is:
H2: The younger generation will have significantly higher levels of Internet use than oIder generations.

Generational Effects on Agenda Setting. The level of issue consensus between demographic subgroups has been the focus of several studies. The study most closely related to the present one was conducted in Spain, and found the weakest pattern of increasing consensus between older and younger subgroups.28Rank order correlations were the lowest at .75 between younger and older populations on issue agendas. Correlationsbetween the media agenda and older peoples agenda were strongest.29That study supported the idea of increased consensus corresponding to an increase in use of newspapers and television for political information, but less strongly when the comparison is between older and younger people. Shaw and MartinjO found a greater difference in tendency toward consensus between men and women as the frequency of daily newspaper reading increased. Similar tendencies as those found in the Spain
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study were discovered regarding different ages. In China, a study divided the sample according to gender, income, and with similar outcomes, but age was not studied. Nor was age among the demographics analyzed in Zhus The only other study that examined agendasetting effects on youth did not document differences, but was designed to explore the influences on how adolescents decide what issues are important.33It found that adolescents play an active role in the formation of their political identities once they are motivated to follow news and talk about issues with others. Initially, however, most adolescents are not paying attention to Political Information and Behavior in Young Adults. Compared to older voters, those ages 18 to 25 have less political information and pay less attention to media information about government. They also believe media are not doing a good job of reporting on issues important to d1em.3~ Evidence for the importance of political information via non-traditional news sources is increasing. The term non-traditionalmedia has been used to refer to a number of different sources ranging from entertainment talk shows36 televised political talk shows37 to and radio talk shows.38Each provides public affairs information, but not necessarily from the same perspective as newspapers or television news. The present research takes into account one of these non-traditional media: news on the Internet. Generational Diferences and Civic Engagement. Civic engagement and social capital are the focus of another area of research where generational differences and media use have been documented. Some research shows that younger Americans, the heaviest users of the Internet, are particularly detached from public l i f e l e s s engaged in their communities, less trusting of their fellow citizens, and less satisfied with their lives than their parents were as young people.39 But in their analyses of the Civic Generation, Baby Boomers, and Generation X, Shah and c o l l e a g ~ e s ~ ~ found that the latter showed the strongest effects of Internet use on civic participation. Generational differences in the degree to which the Internet influences civic participation seem to stem from age-related differences in the type of media on which people depend most heavily. Specifically, because young generations rely heavily on the Internet to get information about community issues, the Internet is more likely to be effective in promoting youth civic participation than it is for promoting older generations participation. Results from a Pew Center poll in 200641are mixed; todays youth were more interested in politics than those of a generation ago, but only a third followed news of public affairs. Based on the mixed findings of studies of generational differences in media use, political communication, and civic participation or social capital, and because no research has yet directly compared agenda-setting effects across generations, this sfudy asks two research questions:

RQ1: Will agenda-setting effects be weaker for the younger generation than for the older generations? RQ2: Will agenda-setting effects be weaker for high Internet users than for low to moderate users?

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Study 1.

Public Opinion Survey. Data were collected in a statewide poll of 1,023 adults in Louisiana conducted by the Public Policy Research Lab at Louisiana State University between January 29 and March 3, 2004. The poll used random-digit dialing and had a response rate of 48% and a margin of error of + / - 3.1% at the 95%.confidencelevel. The dependent variable, salience of statewide issues, was measured by asking What do you think are the three most important problems facing the state of Louisiana? and then asking the single most important issue. All open-ended answers were coded into the five categories most frequently mentioned: education, 61%; the economy and jobs, 49%; health care and insurance, 31%; crime, 21%; and corruption, 14%.The choice of five issues is appropriate because past research has shown that public attention tends to be focused on between five and seven different issues at one time.42 It is common in research to study age in terms of generational cate g ~ r i e sso respondents were divided into three subgroups: those age ,~~ 18 to 34, the youngest generation; those age 35 to 54, the Baby Boomers; and those age 55 and older, the Civic G e n e r a t i ~ n . ~ ~ News use was measured with four questions that asked, Do you read a newspaper?, Do you subscribe to a newspaper?, Do you watch news on TV (all responses, yes = 1, no = 0), and Do you get most of your news about Louisiana public affairs and politics from television, newspapers, or the Internet? This study included two separate Internet questions: How many hours a day do you spend online while not working? (None to 4 hours, 5 or more hours) and Do you go online to read news? (yes = 1, no = 0). Content Analysis. A content analysis was conducted using the Lexis-Nexis database from January 1 to March 3, 2004. Louisiana newspapers indexed on Lexis-Nexis were the Baton Rouge Advocate and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the state and local Associated Press wires also were used. Local television newscasts dealing with statewide issues were not available. As in most first-level agenda-setting research, the unit of analysis was the number of stories, a good indicator of media salience because of its high correlation with other measures such as column inches.45 The top five issues that emerged from the public opinion survey were counted using the following keywords: Economy or budget, employment or jobs or w o r k for economy and jobs; Education for education; health and care or insurance, charity and health or care for health care; crime for crime; and government and corruption or ethics for corruption; only state-related stories were used. Keywords had to appear within the headline or lead of the story; given the inverted pyramid structure of news writing, this helped screen out stories mentioning issues only peripherally. Results. A little more than 25% of this sample was between 18 and 34 years old, 42% were 35 to 54, and 32% were over 55. Eighty-six percent were white, 25% were African American, 2% were Hispanic, and
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TABLE 1 Percentages of Louisiana Respondents by Age and Where They Get News
Where Get Most News Subscribe to a Paper Read a Paper Watch TV News

Go Online for News

More than 5 Hours Online

Paper

TV

Internet

%
18-34 25-54 55+ 25 40 35.5

%
23.5 42 34

%
50 38 12

%
19 43 38

%
17 44.5 39

%
21 43 35

%
31.7 49 19.5

%
11 2 4

fewer than 1%were Asian. Women made up 58% of the sample. Fortyone percent were Democrats, 28% were Republicans, and 22% were Independents. HI, that the younger generation will have significantly lower levels of traditional media use than the older generations, was supported. There were significant differences in media use among all four measures, with the youngest generation using traditional media significantly less than Baby Boomers or the Civic Generation. The 18-to-34-year-oldssubscribed to a newspaper 19% of the time compared to 35-to-54-year-olds 4376, and 55-and-overs 38% (Xz=34.92, df=2, p < .001); 17%of the younger generation said they read a newspaper, compared to 44.5% and 39% for the two older groups (X2=51.82,df=2, p < .001), and 21% watched TV news versus 43% and 35% in the two older groups (X*=28.32,df=2, p < .001). The youngest generation was significantly more likely to say they got most of their news from the Internet (50%)(X2 = 27.64, df=8, p < .001), whereas the 35-to-54-year-olds got most of their news from television (42%),and the 55-and-older group got most news from newspapers (35%; see Table 1). H2, that the younger generation will have significantly higher levels of Internet news use than older generations, was partially supported. The youngest group was significantly more likely to spend 5 or more hours online per day when not working (11%) than the other age groups (2% of 35-to-54-year-olds,4% of 55-and-older; Xz=22.25,df=2, p < .001); however, it was the Baby Boomers who were more likely to say they go online for news (X2=14.8;df=2, p < .001). R Q l asked whether the agenda-setting effects of the news media on the younger generation would be weaker than on the Baby Boomers and the Civic Generation. Spearmans rho showed that both the Baby Boomers and the Civic Generations agendas of important issues were perfectly correlated (1.0) with the media agenda, but the younger generations agenda correlated with the medias at .80 ( p = .lo). A more sensitive test, Pearsons r, comparing the percentages of people in each age group with the percentages of media stories, also showed a statistically significant correlation for all tests; even the 18-year-oldsagenda was highly and significantly correlated (r = .986, p < .05) with the media agenda. Respondents as a whole ranked the most important statewide issues in order identical to newspaper ranking; however, the youngest generation

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TABLE 2 Total Number of Stories and Rank Order of People Saying the Issue Was the Most lmportant Problem in Louisiana
Issue
Stories (Rank) Total (Rank) 18-34 (Rank) 35-54 (Rank) 55+ (Rank)

Economy/ Jobs Education Health Care Crime Corruption

Total N
~ ~

1,838 (1) 1,593 (2) 863 (3) 782 (4) 84 (5) 5,160

703 (1) 615 (2) 316 (3) 218 (4) 143 (5) 1,995

150 (2) 154 (1) 71 (4) 78 (3) 37 (5) 460

318 (1) 276 (2) 132 (3) 90 (4) 64 (5) 880

235 (1) 185 (2) 113 (3) 50 (4) 42 (5) 625

ranked education higher than the economy and said crime was more important to them than health care and insurance (see Table 2). RQ2 asked whether agenda-setting effects would be weaker for high Internet users than for low to moderate users. Three questions making up an index of Internet use were scored with one point each for those who said they went online to read news, that the Internet was their primary source of news, and that they used the Internet 5 or more hours per day. Spearmans rho showed that the low and moderate Internet users agendas were significantly correlated with the media agenda (low = .90, p < .05; moderate = l.O), but high Internet users agenda was more weakly correlated at .70 ( p = .219). High Internet users were significantly more likely to be from the youngest generation (Xz = 31.75, p < .001) and the Baby Boomers (Xz = 9.76, p < .01) than the Civic Generation. O young adults, 6% were in the high Internet use category, f 24% in the medium, and 70% in the low category. Study 2. The first study asked about the salience of statewide issues and included questions about respondents Internet use, but was unable to assess the television news content of statewide issues. In order to obtain a fuller picture of the effects of age on agenda setting, a second study was conducted in a different state; it asked about the salience of national instead of statewide issues and included television news in the content analysis. Public Opinion Survey. Data were collected in a statewide poll of 685 North Carolina adults conducted by Elon University between February 16 and 19,2004. The poll used random-digit dialing and had a margin of sampling error of + / - 3.74%. The dependent variable, issue salience, was measured by two questions about social salience and personal salience. Each respondent was asked: What is the most important problem facing this country today? and What is the most important problem that is personally relevant to you? Responses were combined in this study because previous research showed no significant differences in question wording or All open-ended answers were coded into the five categories most frequently mentioned: economy / jobs, terrorism /national security, war and foreign relations, health care, and education.
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News use was measured with five questions that asked how many days out of the last seven had respondents read a local paper, read a national paper, listened to radio, watched local TV, and watched national TV. Content Analysis. A content-analysis was again conducted using the Lexis-Nexis database and also the Vanderbilt TV news archives (because this study asked about issues of national salience). The time lag was from January 1 to February 19, 2004. Newspapers from different regions across the state included the Greensboro News & Record, Raleigh News 6 Observer, Wilmington Star-News, and the Winston-Salem Journal. Network television news was coded from ABC, CBS, and NBC. The keywords used for economy/jobs were "economy, stock market, U.S. budget or deficit, and business, jobs, employment, and outsourcing''; for terrorism and security, words were "terrorism, terrorists, and homeland security"; for war and foreign relations, words were "war and Iraq or Afghanistan, foreign relations or diplomacy, world trade"; for health care and insurance, words were "health and care, health and insurance"; and for education, words were "education." Two independent coders counted the number of stories about each issue on the three television networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, using abstracts from the Vanderbilt Television News Archives in the same categories; 20% of the data were coded by both. Individual reliabilities using Scott's pi were: Economy/jobs = .84; terrorism = .96; war = .82; health care = 90; education = 91. Results. The sample was comprised of 60% women and 40% men. Thirty percent were Republican, 42% were Democrat, and 18% were Independent; the others gave "other" or did not answer the question. Eighty percent were white; 20% were African American, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. In the three age categories, 22% were between 18 and 34 years old, 43% were ages 35 to 54, and 35% were 55 or older. HI, that the younger generation would have significantly lower levels of traditional media use than older generations, was supported. There were significant differences in media use among all three generations, with the youngest generation using traditional media significantly less often than either Baby Boomers or the Civic Generation (F = 47.26, df = 670, 672, p < ,001, q2 = .124). The youngest generation, on average, watched, listened, and read news media 3 days in the last week, while the Baby Boomers averaged 4 days, and the Civic Generation averaged 5 days of media use. RQ1 asked whether agenda-setting effects on the younger generation would be weaker than on the Baby Boomers and the Civic Generation. Spearman's rho again showed that both the Baby Boomers' and the Civic Generation's agenda of important issues were perfectly correlated (1.0) with the media agenda, but the younger generation's agenda correlated with the media's at a slightly lower .90, which was statistically significant ( p < .05). Again, the more sensitive Pearson's r, comparing the percentages of people in each age group with the percentages of media stories, also showed a statistically significant correlation for all tests; even the lowest correlation, the 18-year-olds, was highly significant

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TABLE 3 Total Number of Stories and Rank Order of North Carolina Respondents Saying the Issue Was the Most Important Problem
Issue

Stories (Rank)
1,839 (1) 452 (2) 310 (3) 253 (4) 198 (5) 3,052

Total (Rank)
622 (1) 158 (2) 120 (3) 60 (4) 40 (5)
1,000

18-34 (Rank) 113 (1) 33 (2) 30 (3) 1 (5) 1 20 (4)

207

35-54 (Rank) 298 (1) 75 (2) 48 (3) 28 (4) 15 (5) 464

55+ (Rank) 211 (1) 50 (2) 42 (3) 21 (4) 5 (5) 329

Economy/ Jobs Terrorism War Health Care Education

Total N

(r = .989, p < .001) with the media's. The respondents as a whole ranked the most important issues in the identical order as the number of newspaper stories; however, the youngest generation ranked education higher than health care (see Table 3). These results from North Carolina were similar to those from the Louisiana poll.
The results of the test of the first hypothesis were consistent with findings from previous studies-the youngest generation, those ages 18 to 34 years old, both read newspapers and watched television significantly less often than older generations. The 18-to-34-year-oldsin North Carolina used traditional media one to two days per week less often than people ages 35 and older. In Louisiana, 50% fewer young people subscribed to a newspaper, and 56% to 62% fewer read a newspaper than those 35 and older; 40% to 50% fewer young people watched TV news. Internet use in the Louisiana study also is consistent with previous studies. Fully half of the youngest group said they got most of their news from the Internet, with 42% of the Baby Boomers saying they get most of their news from TV, and 35% of the oldest generation getting news from newspapers. The youngest group had 64% to 82% more of its members spending 5-plus hours online each day than the Boomers and oldest generation. That question asked only how many hours each day respondents spent online while not working, but not what they were doing when online. It was actually the Baby Boomers-not the 18-to-34year-olds-who said they spent their online time reading news. All those hours the youngest spent online could have been in chat rooms, blogging, or looking at non-news sites; all that is known for certain is that they were online significantly more than other age groups, but they were not getting more news online. Yet, despite evidence that the youngest generation is not exposed to traditional media as frequently as the older generations, and does use the Internet significantly more, there is little support for the intuitive idea that diversity of media will lead to the end of a common public agenda as we have known it. Rather, different media use among the young did not seem to influence the agenda-setting effect much at all. In these two samples, the correlations between the media agenda and the
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Discussion

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youngest generation's agenda were still strong and, in one case, statistically significant. In the Louisiana study, the younger generation's agenda correlated with the media's at .80; in North Carolina, the correlation was a significant .90. Even the biggest users of the Internet-the youngest generation and Baby Boomers-had agendas correlated at .70 with the media agenda. While this was the weakest correlation found in the study, it was still strong by most agenda-setting standards, and was statistically significant when the more sensitive Pearson's correlation was used. This provides strong support for the idea that agenda-setting effects still prevail among the young. These correlations are equal to or superior to many in other studies that constitute evidence of a strong agenda-setting influence. For example, Shaw and Martin47considered .80 to be "high and .55 to be "moderate," while Kiousis and M ~ C o m b called .72 s~~ a "close correspondence" and included significance levels of .10 because of the effects of small numbers of ranks on significance tests for rank order correlations. Even the original Chapel Hill agenda-setting study reported a correlation of .71.49 To shed more light on these findings, the issues that the younger respondents said were important to them but were not identical to the media's agenda were examined. In both studies, the 18-to-34-year-olds ranked education higher in importance than the media did. Education was the number-one problem in Louisiana for the young respondents, but it was second in amount of media coverage, after the economy and jobs. In North Carolina, education was fourth most important for the younger group, but was fifth in the media, which focused more on health care. There was an additional discrepancy in the North Carolina data; the younger generation rated crime third and health care fourth in importance; the media coverage reversed these rankings. This would seem to raise the question of whether the 18-to-34-yearolds are selectively exposing themselves to news of education in both states, and also crime in Louisiana, more than other age groups, or whether the media they use are featuring more news about these issues, perhaps because they feel it is of more interest to younger audiences. It makes intuitive sense that these young people would be more interested in education, which is personally relevant to their age group. Personal relevance or the obtrusiveness of the issue of education is likely to be high for these 18-to-34-year-olds; many at the younger end of this age group are likely in college or technical schools themselves, while those at the upper end of the age bracket may have children of their own. Thus, it is likely that the concern with education outstrips that of the other age groups or the media because of personal experience with the issue, moreso than media exposure to it. This age group's interest in crime over health care and insurance also can be interpreted in this light; younger people are less likely to have health problems than older people, so health care and insurance may just not be as personally relevant to them regardless of the amount of media coverage.

Conclusion
504

These findings do not support the idea that diverse sources of news and the Internet spell the end of the agenda-setting influence. These two
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samples of the youngest generation did not rank issues in exactly the same order of importance as either the media or people in the Baby Boomer or Civic Generations, but the correspondence was nevertheless strong. This study did find that the youngest generation is using traditional media significantly less often than either of their older counterpart generations, and that they are using the Internet more, although perhaps not for news of public issues. As M ~ C o m b pointed out, most s~~ Internet news sites are subsidiaries of traditional news media, and there is a high degree of redundancy in the media agendas even on diverse media. Furthermore, most people do not have the time or desire to explore the multitude of diverse issues on numerous channels and Web sites, but they are interested in the events that others consider important. Thus, much of the news, even in diverse sources, is likely to continue to be relatively homogeneous. Even the young, with their different interests based on personal relevance, are still likely to be exposed to the main issues of mainstream society and media. This study did not ask respondents about the specific sites they use on the Internet, or which shows they watch on entertainment and non-traditional media. We can only speculate about which media the youngest generation are using, if any, instead of traditional media for the information necessary to make responsible decisions about democratic life. However, other studies have shown that this youngest group is learning about important issues from the Web, late-night comedians, and other entertainment media. It is possible that the agenda-setting influence of these non-traditional media is just as great for younger adults as the influence of traditional media is for older ones, but we do not know how similar the issue agendas of these various media are. These are important questions to answer because the Internet and non-traditional news are increasing in popularity, and these young adults are society's future leaders. Consensus on which issues take priority is important in order for government and the public to work together efficiently. While this study looked directly at generational differences in agenda-setting effects, it cannot answer all questions. It is important to examine whether young people's patterns of media use mirror the salience of issues promoted in the media they use most, or whether personal relevance explains most of the differences. It will take more studies focused specifically on these questions and longitudinal research to discover how young adults come to form ideas about what issues are important. Nevertheless, the overall finding here is a high degree of consensus across generations regarding the issue agenda.

NOTES
1. Pew Research Center, Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe, 2004, http: / / people-press.org / reports / display.

php3?ReportID=200. 2. Bruce Bimber, "The Internet and Citizen Communication with

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