ABSTRACT

Of the many changes that have altered the American media landscape in the last decade, the growth of the Internet is arguably the most significant. In the early 1990s, less than a million Americans were online; by late 2004, that number had risen to 120 million, a solid majority of the U.S.adult population. Seventy million Americans now log on to the Internet in a typical day, reading news, checking e-mail, and engaging in a host of other online activities. 1 Although the number of Americans online is now expanding only slowly, after the rapid growth of the late 1990s, the importance of Internet content in the American media diet continues to grow. Broadband penetration in America is still expanding at an exponential rate (Horrigan, 2004); among the highly educated and the young, heavy Internet use is now the rule.