The 2008 election has proved to be an historic one. Barack Obama has become the first African American President of the United States. There were many firsts in the 2008 election-one being many young adults voted for the first time.
The difference between past elections and the 2008 election is how voters, especially the young voters, got information about candidates. Unlike in the past where news stations and newspapers served as the number one sources of information, the Internet has become a more favored outlet by students.
According to a Pew Research survey from January, 42% of people age 18-29, regularly learned news about campaigns from the Internet, compared to 20% in 2004. Even on a very small scale, 15 out of 20 News Literacy Students, ranging from freshman to seniors who were registered and planning on voting, said that they receive most of their news concerning the election from the Internet.
Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, have become sites were candidates target the youth vote. The Pew Research Center stated that “Fully two-thirds of Americans age 18-29 say they use social networking sites, and more than a quarter in this age group (27%) say that they have gotten information about candidates and the campaign from them – including 37% among those ages 18-24.”
The Obama campaign was especially successful when it came to targeting young voters. As of November 5th,, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) estimated that 24 million people ages 18-29 voted and according to exit polls conducted by CNN, 66% of people of the same age voted for Obama.
With such an overwhelming amount of information, many people have found it hard to distinguish between what is valid and what is false. Over the course of the campaign many rumors originated on the Internet. For example Sarah Palin’s newborn child was really her daughter’s.
Many have recognized the need for accurate sources online and the need to teach people how to recognize false information. In 2007, Will Ruben, a sophomore at Harvard University, founded VoteGopher.com. Ruben created the website “that summarized the presidential candidates’ positions on the all the issues he cared about.” The website is aimed at voters aged 17-30. Websites like Politifact.com and Factcheck.org have also become popular sites.
Stony Brook students who are taking the News Literacy class, know that it is important “to know your neighborhood,” when searching for information online.
Professor and Dean of the School of Journalism, Howard Schneider, stressed the importance of knowing your sources and how many young people are blurring the lines between information that is reliable and unreliable and news and entertainment. “Young people are getting information from multiple sources? there is nothing wrong as long as they can distinguish?”
