The Impact of Internet News Consumption
on Mass Media Use
Abstract
The goal of this study is to document the potentially growing impact of Internet news
consumption on traditional news usage. Data for this study comes from four nationally
representative telephone surveys conducted among American adults in 1998, 2000, 2002, and
2004. Each of the surveys contains the same questions regarding respondents’ exposure to news
on television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and the Internet. The findings show that the
consumption of Internet news does not decrease the time spent with traditional news sources,
even among those most likely to be affected. In all four surveys that were conducted between
1998 and 2004, Internet news consumption correlated positively with the use of traditional news
sources. Overall, this indicates that heavy Internet users are supplementing rather than
displacing their overall news consumption with time spent on the Internet.