Great Graphic: Social Media and the Political Dialogue

Here is a Great Graphic from the Pew Research Center.  It show by age group who and how the social media is being utilized. 

I see this dovetailing nicely with a big picture hypothesis being sketched out in this space  (here and here).  To state it succinctly:  Capitalism is about relationships and the financial crisis is going to spur changes in these relationships.   Examples of such relationships include citizens and the state, employer and employees and what is personal and what is public. 

The social media can be a medium for the expression of civic and political views.  Pew finds that two thirds of social media users do precisely this.  Enriching the political discourse, link and respond to others' content.  The younger cohorts are embracing this more than the older cohorts, but that is not surprising.  Nor does it undermine the argument. 

Civic involvement is important.  It is, I would argue, the real meaning of freedom from the ancient Greeks to the Founding Fathers of the United States:  sharing in the shaping of the community (however defined) in which one lives.  Pew Research shows that the new social media is being embraced that can create more space and broaden the dialogue.  I fully appreciate that some will argue that quality is uneven at best, but that too is part of the dialogue and is not that different from the uneven nature of town hall meetings or PTA meetings.