Pew Research Center

More than 750 new low-power FM (LPFM) community radio stations have been licensed to join the FM airwaves since 2014, according to the Federal Communications Commission. This has nearly doubled the total number to more than 1,500 LPFM stations across the US and its territories.

This surge is in part the result of a new window for applications that the FCC opened from Oct 15 to Nov 14, 2013. Thousands of applications poured in during that period. The window follows the passage of new legislation signed in 2011 that opened up opportunities for LPFM stations to operate in larger markets and urban areas. (The initial FCC order restricted LPFM stations to smaller markets and less densely populated areas.)

As journalists and media practitioners gather for the annual Online News Association Conference, here are 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center surveys and analyses that show how these rapid digital shifts are reshaping Americans’ news habits:

1) About four-in-ten Americans now often get news online.
2) Mobile is becoming a preferred device for digital news.
3) Long-form journalism has a place in today’s mobile-centric society.
4) More than half (55%) of US smartphone users get news alerts, but few get them frequently.
5) Social media, particularly Facebook, is now a common news source.
6) Overall, more digital news consumers get their news online in the process of doing other things online (55%) than specifically seek out the news (44%), though there are differences by social media platform.
7) Few Americans trust social media as a news source.
8) While many Americans get news from social media, few are heavily engaged with news.
9) In the digital news environment, the role of friends and family is prominent – and for some it’s an echo chamber.
10) Three-in-ten Americans turn to 2016 presidential candidates’ digital messages for news and information about the election – and the candidates’ social media posts outpace their websites and emails as sources of this news.

In an increasingly contentious presidential campaign, just a quarter of voters who support Donald Trump in the general election say they have a lot or some close friends who are supporters of Hillary Clinton. Even fewer Clinton backers (18%) say they have at least some friends who support Trump. Nearly half of Clinton supporters (47%), and 31% of Trump supporters, say they have no close friends who support the opposing candidate. More than four-in-ten Trump supporters (44%) say they have a lot of close friends who back Trump, while another 38% say they have some friends who support him. Similarly, most Clinton supporters say they have a lot (41%) or some close friends (40%) who also express support for Clinton.

Among the findings: Election discussions focus more on personalities than issues. About six-in-ten voters (59%) say the discussions about the election have mostly been about the candidates’ personalities and comments; fewer (32%) say they have focused on specific issues and policy positions. In this regard, voters are having conversations about the election that reflect what they say they are seeing from the campaign and news coverage of the election. In June, 65% of voters said the presidential campaign “is not focused on important policy debates,” and in a separate survey, 55% of adults said there was too little news coverage of the candidates’ stances on issues.

How do Americans view Hillary Clinton – a fixture in national politics for more than 25 years – as the race between her and Donald Trump for the White House begins in earnest? Here’s a roundup of key Pew Research Center findings on views of Hillary Clinton, her politics and the impact she would have on Washington.

1) More voters say they know a lot about where Clinton stands on important issues than say the same about Trump.
2) Few voters think gender will hurt Clinton this fall.
3) Supporters and opponents see Clinton’s political views differently.
4) Many voters – including many of her supporters – doubt Clinton will change Washington much. Overall, about half (53%) of voters in our June survey say Clinton won’t change the way things work in Washington much. Those who think she will change Washington are divided on whether it will be for the better (20%) or the worse (25%).
5) Democrats feel warmly toward Clinton, while Republican views of her are very cold.

The long-standing digital divide in Internet use between Latinos and whites is now at its narrowest point since 2009 as immigrant Latinos and Spanish-dominant Latinos make big strides in going online, according to newly released results from Pew Research Center’s 2015 National Survey of Latinos. Meanwhile, broadband use among Latinos is little changed since 2010.

The story of technological adoption among Latinos has long been a unique one. While Latinos have lagged other groups in accessing the Internet and having broadband at home, they have been among the most likely to own a smartphone, to live in a household without a landline phone where only a cellphone is available and to access the Internet from a mobile device. Since 2009, the share of Latino adults who report using the Internet increased 20 percentage points, up from 64% then to 84% in 2015. Over the same period, Internet use among whites grew too, though at a slower rate, moving from 80% to 89%. As a result, the gap in Internet use between Latinos and whites declined from 16 percentage points in 2009 to 5 percentage points in 2015.

At a time when the appropriateness of language has become a political issue, most Americans (59%) say “too many people are easily offended these days over the language that others use.” Fewer (39%) think “people need to be more careful about the language they use to avoid offending people with different backgrounds.”

A new national survey by Pew Research Center finds substantial partisan, racial and gender differences on this question. About eight-in-ten (78%) Republicans say too many people are easily offended, while just 21% say people should be more careful to avoid offending others. Among Democrats, 61% think people should be more careful not to offend others, compared with 37% who say people these days are too easily offended. The partisan gap is reflected in starkly divergent views among Trump and Clinton supporters. By a ratio of about five-to-one (83% to 16%), more Trump supporters say too many people are easily offended. Among Clinton supporters, 59% think people need to exercise caution in speaking to avoid offending others, while 39% think too many are easily offended.

In the digital news era, presidential candidates and their campaigns have a greater ability to serve as direct sources of news and information for the public. Pew Research Center has studied this evolution for the last five presidential cycles and finds that in 2016, the candidates’ social media posts outpace their websites and e-mails as sources of news.

Roughly a quarter of US adults (24%) turn to social media posts from either the Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump campaigns as a way of keeping up with the election, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted June 7 to July 5, 2016. This exceeds the portions that rely on the candidates’ campaign websites (10%) or their emails (9%). Overall, three-in-ten Americans get election news from at least one of these three online sources for news about the election. What’s more, most of those who rely on the candidates’ websites and e-mails for news also turn to candidates’ social media posts for information, whether on Twitter, Facebook or some other platform. About two-thirds of those who get news from either candidate’s website (63%) and about the same portion who turn to candidate e-mails (68%) also turn to a candidate’s social media posts.

The November 2016 election is still about four months away, yet most Americans are already worn out by the amount of news coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. A new Pew Research Center survey conducted June 7-July 5 finds that about six-in-ten Americans (59%) feel exhausted by the amount of election coverage, while 39% say they like getting a lot of coverage about the election. This feeling of fatigue is particularly true among those who aren’t following news about the election very closely – 69% of this group say they are worn out compared with about 41% of those who follow the election very closely.

That said, just because Americans are worn out by the amount of coverage does not imply that interest in or attention to the election itself is low. In fact, a recent Pew Research Center report showed that there was greater interest than during previous campaigns. Further, in February, we found that 91% of Americans had learned about the election from at least one type of source in the previous week. With so many saying they are worn out by the coverage, what is it that Americans think has been getting too much attention?

Technology is changing the ways people seek and get knowledge, communicate and work. But Americans still tend to embrace familiarity over newness when it comes to their choices of new products, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. Overall, 52% of adults say they “feel more comfortable using familiar brands and products,” and 39% describe themselves as preferring to wait until they hear about others’ experiences before trying something new themselves. Similarly, 39% say they prefer their “tried and trusted” brands. But 35% of Americans say they like the variety of trying new products, and three-in-ten like being able to tell others about their experiences with new technology. About one-in-six adults (15%) say they usually try technology products before others do.

Using people’s answers to these six questions, Pew Research Center created an “early adopter index” that classifies Americans’ preferences for new technology products or familiar ones into three tiers: strong, medium and weak. Some 28% of Americans hold strong preferences for being early adopters and trying new technology products, 45% score at or near the mean of the index, and 26% score low on the index, indicating a stronger preference for familiar technology products. When the six questions are taken individually, the answers suggest a tilt toward the comfort of the familiar, with a committed minority of the more adventurous mixed in.

Digital age platforms are providing researchers the ability to outsource portions of their work – not just to increasingly intelligent machines, but also to a relatively low-cost online labor force comprised of humans. These so-called “online outsourcing” services help employers connect with a global pool of free-agent workers who are willing to complete a variety of specialized or repetitive tasks. Because it provides access to large numbers of workers at relatively low cost, online outsourcing holds a particular appeal for academics and nonprofit research organizations – many of whom have limited resources compared with corporate America.

For instance, Pew Research Center has experimented with using these services to perform tasks such as classifying documents and collecting website URLs. And a Google search of scholarly academic literature shows that more than 800 studies – ranging from medical research to social science – were published using data from one such platform, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, in 2015 alone. The rise of these platforms has also generated considerable commentary about the so-called “gig economy” and the possible impact it will have on traditional notions about the nature of work, the structure of compensation and the “social contract” between firms and workers. Pew Research Center recently explored some of the policy and employment implications of these new platforms in a national survey of Americans.