The number of people who sought election news online grew to 11 million in 1998, up by 4 million users from 1996. But among regular Internet news users, the percentage who logged on for election information fell to 15 percent from 22 percent in 1996. That is partly due, in part, to the fact that 1996 was a presidential election year, the authors said. The survey found 35 percent of all adults use e-mail, up from 19 percent in 1996. E-mail is increasingly used for personal communication.
Online shopping is up.
In 1995, just 8 percent had. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the public as a whole and for Internet users. For smaller subgroups, the margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.