Influence? In this economy?

[Commentary] While the academic jury is still out on whether a person getting their news from social media makes them any more or less partisan than those who sought out right-wing talk radio or lefty political journals a generation ago, there exists another filter bubble that, while it’s received relatively little public attention, affects the majority of people reading this article: The average producer of online content is far more internet-savvy than the average consumer of online content.  While it’s always been expected that journalists and intellectuals be more knowledgeable about their beats or fields of study than the general population, the internet (and specifically Twitter) has a universalizing effect, making it easy to assume that because you and everyone in your circle is perpetually Online that everyone else is, too.

[Kevin Munger is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at NYU and a member of the University's Social Media and Political Participation lab.]