After a relatively quiet weekend with regard to election news, I want to kick the week off by taking a look at an interesting piece published in Campaigns and Elections this morning in which political media consultant Tom Edmonds argues the case for newspaper advertisements as a means of reaching not only young voters, but all voters.
At first, I was skeptical of his premise. But then he laid down some statistical backing, courtesy of a Pew Research Center report from earlier this year.
Debunking the argument that young people are turning exclusively to Facebook and Twitter for their political fixes, the poll found that just 29 percent of those ages 18-29 are getting their campaign updates from online news sources — down from 42 percent in 2008.
And even older voters are turning — surprisingly — to newspapers for the bulk of their political news. Edmonds writes:
A whopping 80 percent of voters 35 and older are regular readers of newspapers in print or online. Yes, I said online. According to another national survey in January of this year, Moore Information's American Voters Media Use Study, one in four Americans report using a mobile device for campaign news and of those newspaper sources are the number one choice for 58 percent. Even among young voters who do use smartphones et al for campaign news a whopping 62 percent go to newspaper sources. And it's not just "mobile devices." Newspaper websites rank #1 in 22 of the top 25 largest markets.
Alexander: Given these numbers and analysis, has the role of social media in campaigning been overstated? Is it possible that, instead of boasting about their number of Twitter followers and chiding the news media, the GOP candidates should be more focused on traditional media coverage?
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