The overwhelming majority of Internet users are using TV to get most of their war news. In fact, of all the major forms of media, the Internet is last on the list of ways that online Americans are getting most of their news. Still, 17% of online Americans say their principal source of information about the war is the Internet and that number is considerably higher than when we asked questions about how Americans were getting their news immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks. At that time, only 3% of online Americans said the Internet was their primary source of information about the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and the aftermath of the attack.

In the immediate pre-war period, Internet users were even more likely to say they were relying on the Internet for news about the situation in Iraq. Some 26% of online Americans said the Internet was their primary source of news and information about the possibility of war with Iraq. Further, more people in our pre-war sample said their use of the Internet was keeping them abreast of breaking news developments, was helping them form their views about the war, and helping them promote their views about the impending conflict.

In addition, the size of the online news audience has jumped dramatically beginning in the period just before the war began on March 19 and in the immediate days after hostilities were started. On each of the five days after the war began on March 19, more than 33% of U.S. Internet users went online to get news. And online news interest was even higher in the days immediately before the war broke out: 37% of online Americans were getting news on a typical day. This is a substantial increase from the usual online news audience; we have previously found that 24%-26% of Internet users got news on a typical day. It is also the first time in the three years of polling done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that more than 30% of Internet users were gathering news online during a typical day.

Men with Internet access are much more likely than online women to be getting news from the Web both before and after the war broke out. In addition, Internet veterans (those with more than six years of online experience) and broadband users are the most likely to be getting news online. Nearly half of broadband users are getting news online each day.

At the same time, we do not see a diminishing of other online activity at the outset of the war. Typical Internet use has not changed – roughly the same number of U.S. Internet users are going online during a typical day, they are spending about the same amount of time online and they are doing other online activities at approximately the same rates. This is different from the period right after 9/11, when there were generally fewer people online on any given day and they were not nearly as likely to be doing online browsing for fun or