changing in the country, as you have a more majority-minority population, then these voices that haven t had sort of the traditional routes into, for example, cable television news or radio, they use social media as a way to be entrepreneurial in news discussions, in arts and culture discussions. it s a way of being in control of one s own media sources. i would imagine there s also a certain appeal to the fact that, you know, that it s anonymous as well. well, i think what s beautiful about it is that it can be anonymous or it can be actually an opportunity to get your own personality out there. so people make different choices around it. some of it is mean-spirited, nasty, anonymous snipes but a lot of it is actually people who are branding themselves, who are trying to demonstrate that they can write a smart blog on a weekly basis or that they have intelligent insights about the american political system. again, no one is standing there with a microphone for them but they create