Whereas 42% of Zimbabweans are ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ interested in public affairs, 74% in this survey reported that they ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ discuss politics when they get together with their friends. MDC-T supporters reported a lower interest in public affairs than their ZANU-PF counterparts. 7.2 Interest in public affairs-politics Interest in public and political affairs is reasonably high – and shows only modest variation on the trends in the comparable 2009 Freedom House survey. Only 20% reported in 2010 that they are not interested in public affairs at all, or that they never discuss political matters when they get together with friends. It appears that interest in public and political matters may have declined slightly from the relatively early post-institution-of-IG days of the September 2009 survey to the more confused and doubtful days of late 2010. Some of the differences are in the margin-of-error range, but the lowering is consistent over a series of items and the two items in Table 19 thus appear to offer valid indications of a decline in Zimbabweans’ interest in politics. This is possibly due to the novelty of the IG fading, Zimbabweans becoming used to the slow pace of change and despondency about prospects for short-term change setting in. Table 19: Interest in public affairs and politics ‘How interested are you in public How often do you discuss politics when you get affairs?’ [Q75] together with your friends? [Q76] Reported level of interest 2009 2010 Frequency of discussions 2009 2010 (%) (%) (%) (%) Not interested at all 15 20 Never 19 25 Not very interested 27 39 Sometimes 62 58 Somewhat interested 38 28 Often 19 16 Very interested 21 14 Note: ‘Don’t know’, ‘not sure’ and refuse are not reported in this table The level of political interest of MDC-T supporters appears to be lower than that of ZANU-PF supporters. Whereas 73% of the declared ZANU-PF supporters report that they ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ discuss politics when they get together with friends, the corresponding percentage for the MDC-T supporters was 58%. 7.3 Media use The survey explored media usage of radio, television, newspapers, the internet and certain cell phone uses (Table 21). Compared with the trends of the September 2009 survey, media use appears to have declined. The declines were mostly beyond the reported margin of error. The details in Table 20 indicate that radio remains, by far, the most common source of news [Q70A]. Yet, it is still only 52% of the 59