"The study also found that young people are much more likely than other age groups to find political information online, but traditional media outlets -- television, newspapers and magazines -- remain the primary sources of political news.

"About 20 percent of young Americans turn to the Internet for news on political campaigns, the study found."

1 in 5 are using the internet for their information, and the number continues to grow.

Especially among the ones who are most interested and most involved, which is what the study shows. Among those who are actually interested, this is their preferred method of learning about the issues. And they clearly want interaction, not one-way broadcasts.

The very fact that 20% now rely on this medium and actually prefer it is earth-shattering news.

I watch the news too. But when I really want to learn about something, it's to the internet I go, as are more and more young people all the time.

It's a great thing. Participatory democracy in the real sense. Very worth celebrating.

Sweet. Someone thinks we're young.

I used to be young but I got over it many years ago. That article shows the type of thinking that all blacks vote this way, this person is a woman and she says 'this' therefore thats what women think, young people are on the internet therefore all 'blogger's' are young.

I guess it's easier that way, you don't have to think just talk.

I remember when a neighbor discovered that I wrote poetry and quite a bit of it and have done so over the past many years. "You're an engineer," he said, "engineer's don't write poetry!"

I think you guys are missing the point. The study specifically shows that young people express a strong preference for weblogs and chatrooms for getting their political information. Not that webloggers are young, but that reading weblogs is a popular and growing pastime among young people interested in politics. The ones most active in politics are the ones who most prefer weblogs, too.

From what I've seen, the average person running a well-trafficked weblog is in his 30s or 40s. I'd peg the median age at somewhere around 36 myself. That's not the point.

Young people are expressing a strong interest in interactive dialogue when it comes to getting political information. This is a good thing.

Watching old-school people who are rather perturbed when they notice that most webloggers don't follow the traditional ways of looking at things is also rather amusing to me. ;-)

Dean,

Without a doubt, the entire internet is coming of age as an information processing service - impossible to quantify, but all-encompassing in its effects.

Blogs like this and the other overtly political/philosophical blogs have an effect all out of proportion to the numbers of people who read them...just as, 50 years ago, National Review and The New Republic had social and political effects far in excess of the 10,000-odd subscribers to the particular magazines.

Most people will never bestir themselves to spend time reading and learning on the web...but the people who do will be by definition the people most interested in having a positive effect on policy; not all people will go from Dean's world into political activism, but I'll bet that the percentage of such readers who do is vastly larger than the percentage of the general population who so acts.

The blogosphere is a place where a lie can't last a minute (save for the willfully blind) and the truth, for once, travels much faster than even the best constructed lie. Its a place where, say, some 20 year old who never heard of Madison can run across people who are deeply versed in same...and thus the intellectual pollination from such greats of the past will continue to have its proper place long into the future.

The instant fact-checking and peer review supplied by readers and fellow bloggers is what makes the medium work so well, and so much better than traditional bulletin boards or Usenet news feeds or mailing lists.

Mark, Dean:

I understand what you're saying.

I used to think the same thing. Then I started reading web blogs on a regular basis. And what I found was this (with apologies to Paul Simon): People hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest.

I'm just saying.

Ara is dead on. My guess is that most people tend to seek blogs that mirror their own views, and this reinforces their own opinions. Either that or they seek out opposite blogs just to argue and rant. My hope is that people, regardless of ideology, continue to seek "truth" whatever that is, and hold an open but critically thinking mind.

Dean, I often disagree with you, but a pack of wild eels couldn't drive me away from your blog. If you banned my IP, I would be forced to drive to Ann Arbor and beat your ass!

Most people, or most people who have an ideology or ideological orientation, tend to seek out books, magazines, newspapers, TV and radio stations, movies, and/or churches that most closely mirror their own views, and very often, like-minded friends as well. The blogosphere is hardly distinguished in that regard. It's human nature.

But blogs like this, or Arthur Silber's Light of Reason, or Eric Scheie's Classical Values, or Jeff Soyer's Alphecca, or John Kusch, often link to blogs or sites with diametrically opposing views in order to fisk them or as a "Know Your Enemy" service. They often have a fair spectrum of viewpoints in their blogrolls, too. And some have comment threads like this one where I can find good dialogues across a wide spectrum of views.

I find that I get much more, and better, information about the issues that matter to me from blogs like this one, and the others I named, than from the mass media, though my main source of knowledge and thought still comes from books.

I will say that if a person is not watching C-Span, Tim Russert's Meet the PRess, the McLaughlin Group, and other shows like that, he or she will miss out on too much to form soluble political judgements and arguments.

Oh, and I should mention: I find this dismissive attitude more than a little funny coming out of Ara, who is given to periodically posting breathlessly worshipful articles about the "innovative" Howard Dean campaign and its use of internet technologies to raise funds, discuss issues, and raise awareness.

I almost fell off my chair laughing at the article that breathlessly said, "People really LISTEN when Gov. Dean speaks." Bwaha! Like this is some big exciting development? We've never had THAT in politics before!

I think the fact that it turns out that there are millions of idealistic, intelligent, thoughtful people who don't see it quite the same way must be a little crushing for Ara. Because nothing he's saying about weblogs is any different from newspapers or magazines--except that my experience is that the best webloggers always link to and argue with people they disagree with, and are quick to go ahead and publish information that counters their own point of view. The bad ones don't.

This is different from newspapers and magazines how? Oh yeah, webloggers correct themselves and expand on things more often than the other sources.

We know now that millions read weblogs, making the blogosphere at least as influential as any of the country's biggest newspapers--and that young people who are interested in politics now prefer this medium over the others.

So many clamoring voices arguing, cross-linking, fact-checking--it's just amazing. Yet millions of them consistently refuse to see the world in the terms the old-school left and right want them to. It must be crushingly depressing for the True Believers.

What's that I hear? Something about a river in Egypt? :-)

Okay, I'm done, I'll try to be good now. ;-)

Dean, have you ever posted something that attacks Bush's position on a key issue? Maybe I missed something. (No sarcasm, I'm being serious.)

One main thing about blogs is the time element. A TV show comes on at a certain time of day and runs for a set period of time (with commercial breaks), an hour or a half or so. A newspaper comes out once a day. A magazine every week or every month or every quarter. A book comes out -- once (or every several years if editions are updated). But a blog like this one is updated daily or more. That way, a blogger can reply to another blogger (or to a commenter) practically right away. Arguments back and forth all the time. The dialogue keeps going.

Andrew Sullivan was the first blogger I ever encountered, and I still like him. But, to some extent, he's stuck in the old paradigm. For one thing, he doesn't have comments but publishes letters on a separate page -- including some of the snarkiest letters, which he often leaves unrefuted. There's not enough back-and-forth there. He should give as good as he gets, be more combative. He seems to read and reply to a lot of "old" media but he doesn't seem to be aware even of the existence of a good part of the blogosphere, including a number of blogs that are severely critical of him from one viewpoint or another, and so he doesn't try to refute thair arguments against him, and thus, unfortunately, leaves those arguments standing unanswered. That puts him in a very dangerous position.

The two example that come to my mind are the other man's man whose name begins with A.S., Arthur Silber, who has written some very stinging critiques of his stand on foreign policy from what I must call the Objectivist Left.
The other is the two excellent blogs devoted to the subject of marriage and homosexual marriage, giving arguments both for and against. I'm speaking Maggie Gallagher's and Eve Tushnet's MarriageDebate.com and MarriageMovement.org (Elizabetth Marquardt, Tom Sylvester, David Blankenhorn). Contant dialogue on both blogs, and critiques of Sullivan's position, but which he never answers because he doesn't seem to be aware of them. I hope he wakes up and starts dishing out replies from his Daily Dish.