From here to obscurity?: Media substitution theory and traditional media in an on‐line world

Abstract

AbstractAn online survey targeted to politically interested Internet users assesses whether traditional media use is decreasing, increasing or remaining the same since users first started using the Web, bulletin boards/electronic mailing lists and chat rooms. Associations are made between media use gratifications, political attitudes and demographics and traditional media use, and further analysis determines whether these factors predict changes in the amount of time online users spend with traditional media. This study's findings are compared with a similar study conducted in 1996. News magazines and radio news took the hardest hit from the Internet in 2000 but in 1996 television news suffered the most. Generally, in both years the Internet had not altered media use patterns. In 1996 and 2000 more users claimed that the time they spent seeking political information from traditional media sources had stayed the same than had changed. However, the trend indicates that those Internet users whose media patterns have changed are abandoning traditional media at a much greater rate than they are increasing their use.