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Party and voter-generated online content played a big part in the election of Barack Obama, but Britain is likely to see something different

More than a quarter of American adults - 26% - used their cell phones to learn about or participate in the 2010 mid-term election campaign. In a post-election nationwide survey of adults, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 82% of adults have cell phones. Of those cell owners, 71% use their phone for texting and 39% use the phone for accessing the internet. With that as context, the Pew Internet survey found that:

Now that President Obama, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty have all declared their intentions to run for President in 2012 and rolled out their initial campaign websites, and another leading contender, Sarah Palin, has also unveiled a revamped website for her political operation, SarahPac, it's possible to begin sketching the contours of the 2012 election online. And so far, the inside-the-beltway political media is missing the big story. It's not Facebook. It's the data, stupid.

Since early 2008, American University's Center for Social Media has been producing a series of field reports that profile innovative media for public knowledge and action. Published as part of the Center's Ford Foundation-supported Future of Public Media project (www.futureofpublicmedia.net), these case studies are designed to explore how publics form around participatory and multiplatform media projects. In this report, Nina Keim and Jessica Clark examine two linked projects related to the 2008 presidential election: Twitter Vote Report (TVR) and Inauguration Report '09 (IR09).

Smith's community isn't the only smaller city or town to find itself suffering form a lack of local press. While the New York City mayoral election attracts interest from the New York Times, elsewhere the media landscape has changed drastically, thanks to the shuttering of smaller newspapers that were traditionally the source of local political coverage. In some places, social media is being used to try and replace some of what has been lost in terms of professional reporting.

I sat down with both the GOP and the Democratic social media team leads to learn more about their efforts for the upcoming election.

With new media at hand, elections become a time for innovation, and online engagement can lead to enormous influence

The importance of social media in politics was made clear by Barack Obama's 2008 presidential run. But there is a new frontier of Web 2.0 technologies that politicians and political groups are slowly starting to embrace: the smartphone app. These apps have the potential to reshape how politicians communicate, raise money and get out the vote.

From Twitter and Facebook to viral ads and crowdsourcing, technology appears to offer parties powerful new ways to engage voters

The Republican Party may not have made the best use of Facebook in last fall's elections, but If you're looking to keep tabs on the latest Sarah Palin news these days, your best bet is to become a fan of her on Facebook.