Discourse Online

Social media being such a prominent part of the public sphere today, it was only a matter of time before it played a part in voting. While you cannot cast a vote through social media (although that might not be far off), there are new ways to discuss voting or encourage friends to vote. This article explains recent trends in political discourse through social media. You can find political groups and threads on Facebook, support videos on YouTube, and #whyimnotvotingforobama and #whyimnotvotingforromney hashtags on Twitter. 

It seems like young people are really enjoying political discourse via the internet. However, as the article explains, if you look closer, the discourse is not all that beneficial. It is almost exclusively confined to like-minded people discussing ideas, or yelling matches between people with different ideologies. Political ideas that trended on both sides revolved around debate buzzwords like "Big Bird", or "binders full of women", things mainly used to joke about. 

So is this new form of political discourse beneficial to the public sphere, especially concerning young people? Should we be happy that at least people are taking an interest? Or is the limited expression involved with social media essentially ineffective?