How are social media shaping the relationship and role between government and citizens in the U.S.?
RS: Social media are changing the expectations of how we interact with institutions and people. They inject an immediacy and informality into the way we discuss issues, by taking the conversations that people used to have in small groups around the water cooler or the family dinner table and making them open and public to interested parties anywhere, anytime. People who approach political discourse from the perspective of reading blogs and engaging in online debates via social networks, Twitter, and so on, tend to value authenticity in those interactions, and are less patient with the niceties of the one-to-many broadcast model of communication. A lot of bloggers, for example, started in 2002 and 2003 out of a sense of frustration, feeling left out of the official discourse. A few have gone on to become extremely influential as political opinion-leaders, organizers and fundraisers. I think that our government and our political class, including the political media, are starting to feel
