Tina Fey may do a great Sarah Palin impression, but that doesn't mean Saturday Night Live is the only way young people get their election news.
This year, Penn students - and young people across the country - are more engaged in politics than ever before, and they are increasingly turning to online news sources for their political information.
According to a recent CBS News/Chronicle of Higher Education/UWire poll, in which The Daily Pennsylvanian participated, students on Penn's campus look largely to Internet sources for information about the election.
While 21 percent of Penn students said they read a print newspaper every day for politics news, 70 percent said they read online news about the election on a daily basis.
"That shows a lot of interest," said Peter Levine, a Tufts researcher and the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. "If you turn on your computer, you don't necessarily have to look at political sites."
College junior Leila Glass said she checks online politics sites like fivethirtyeight.com and realclearpolitics.com almost every day.
"The Internet seems to be the best place to get news because it's so easy and there's so much information," she said.
Other sources of information are still popular among Penn students - 32 percent watch television news daily and 45 percent talk about the election with family or friends at least once a day.
It appears that the rise in attention to Internet news sources is also a product of the high level of political awareness this year.
In Pennsylvania, 47 percent of college students say they are paying "a lot" of attention to the election, according to the CBS/Chronicle/UWire poll. At Penn, that number is 64 percent.
Another source of political news for Penn students is the world of late-night comedy - 21 percent of students say they watch it on a daily basis.
But while shows like Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show are well-watched among young people, they aren't generally a primary news source.
According to Randall Miller, a St. Joseph's University history professor and political analyst, late-night comedy tends to be watched in conjunction with other forms of news because of the references made on the shows.
"These shows only actually work if you know something about the issues," he said. "Satire is useless if you don't know anything about what's being satirized."
With this increased amount of information comes the possibility that it could be distorted - but analysts haven't found the amount of misinformation particularly striking.
"That's the nature of campaigns," Miller said.
Levine also said this isn't a major problem because he thinks young people are "pretty savvy" when it comes to sorting through information.
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