Half of the American public now cites the Internet as its main channel for accessing national and international news, according to Pew Research. While the Internet as a news source grew since 2011, so too did television, and radio. Only newspapers suffered a drop.
This fact comes from an interesting list of end of the year data points about American culture that Pew Research has put together. Among the news items, in 2013, for the first time ever, the majority of American adults owns a smartphone.
We are also living in an era in which the public widely distrusts the federal government. Here is more from the report: “For the first time, a majority of the public (53%) says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.”