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Internet Users Are More Tolerant

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“Study Finds Internet Users Are More Tolerant Than Other Americans

By DRU SEFTON
c.2001 Newhouse News Service

New research reveals that Internet users are consistently more tolerant than other Americans toward differing views across the spectrum from ultraright-wing to extremely liberal ideas.

A study based on in-person interviews of 2,300 adults concludes that people who use the Internet more than 10 hours a week are more accepting of a range of different ideas and lifestyles than people who don't use the Internet at all. The correlation holds when adjusted for age, income, gender and race.

The study found:

-- Fifty-six percent of nonusers believed communists should be allowed to speak out in public, while 82 percent of Internet users thought so.

-- Forty-eight percent of nonusers thought an atheist has a right to teach, while 72 percent of users did.

-- Forty-three percent of nonusers approved of African-Americans "pushing" for equal rights, but the figure was 68 percent among Internet users.

-- Fifty-eight percent of nonusers believed a racist author's should be available in a library; 78 percent of users did.

-- Thirty-three percent of nonusers said women should be able to obtain a legal abortion, compared with 52 percent of users.

The responses defy standard labels such as conservative or liberal, said John Robinson, a University of Maryland sociologist and one of five co-authors of the study -- three at Maryland and two at Princeton University.

"At first blush it looks libertarian, but it's not," Robinson said. "The surprise was the lack of consistency."

The political tastes of the Internet users seem to vary on certain specific issues. For instance, the users tend to favor sex education in schools but not birth control for students. The same users see premarital and homosexual sex as acceptable, but not extramarital and teen-age sex.

The report is important because it is one of the first to compare Internet users with nonusers, said Alan Neustadtl, another Maryland sociologist and co-author of the study.

"A substantial amount of research has been conducted by interviewing only people who are online -- that is, only Internet users," Neustadtl said.

In commenting on the study, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research center in Washington, said the finding on tolerance levels "makes a lot of sense."

"We know that Internet users are more likely to have an active social life, more likely to read newspapers and watch TV news, more likely to be civically engaged than nonusers," all activities that would contribute to more tolerant attitudes, Rainie said.

Data for the report, titled "The On-Line Diversity Divide," was collected as part of the 2000 General Social Survey, an ongoing study by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago.

The findings were released as part of a two-week workshop this month at the University of Maryland. Dozens of social scientists and more than 60 graduate students from around the country are meeting at the College Park campus. Organizers hope to lay the foundation for a new area of study: the social impact of information technology.

"The Internet remains a technology that defies easy characterization," Neustadtl said. "The talents and perspectives of all sorts of academic disciplines are needed to understand it."

That's why the researchers hope to establish this new field of research, which would involve experts in such diverse disciplines as computer science, sociology, communications, law, psychology, political science and health.

The authors of the report are Neustadtl, Robinson and Meyer Kestnbaum of Maryland; and Paul DiMaggio and Eszter Hargittai of Princeton.”

Violin
2:07:25 PM
7/03/01

Internet Users Are More Tolerant

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