Many SNS studies tend to examine SNSs, YouTube, and blogs collectively, but I appreciate that Johnson et al. (2010) and Kaye (2010) differentiate between social networks and YouTube and blogs, respectively. It is important to distinguish the differences among these sites, and I thought the authors did a good job of this. Johnson et al. (2010) point out that while many social networking sites require users to create an account to access content, visitors to YouTube are not required to have an account to access its content. To me, this distinction is an important one because users to not have to give up any of their personal information to receive information from YouTube videos. As such, I find it interesting that the more one relies on YouTube, the less likely one intends to vote (Johnson et al. 2010). The authors cite that this could be due to viewer frustration with divergent messages or that the videos simply provide entertainment to those with no intention to vote in the first place, but I also wonder if it also has something to do with the fact that users can consume content more passively on YouTube because they do not even have to be members in order to view it. Perhaps the commitment required to become a member of a SNS can be linked with a user’s commitment to civil engagement.

Kaye’s (2010) study distinguishes SNSs as more emotional and social, as the whole point of SNSs is to socialize, while blogs are more cognitive and do not require user participation. This provides another reason why Web 2.0 sites must be distinguished in academic research and offers insight into their finding that Social Networkers are less interested in and perceive themselves as less knowledgeable about politics than Blogophiles. It appears that people may affiliate SNSs with entertainment, while blogs are considered to be a more serious information source. Like Kaye (2010), I am interested in whether this will change for this year’s election, given the increased popularity of SNSs.

Rojas and Puig-i-Abril (2009) find that those consumers who use ICTs for informational purposes are younger, more educated people who use traditional media for news and who more frequently talk about current events. While these findings make logical sense, I think it is interesting that mobile technologies appear to behave in the same way as online technologies. As the authors mentioned, mobile phone ownership is growing in developing countries, and political and economic leaders would be wise to acknowledge how impacts their citizens’ access to information.

Interestingly, Campbell and Kwak (2010) find that mobile phone communication is a more valuable resource for public involvement among older, rather than younger, users. This is an interesting extension of other studies that find the Internet to be a more useful resource for civic engagement among younger adults (Shah et al. 2001). Perhaps older consumers have more commitments on a daily basis, so they must rely more heavily on their mobile devices than younger adults. While I was surprised that network heterogeneity did not have a negative interactive effect between mobile-based discussion and political participation in Campbell and Kwak’s (2011) study, it is interesting that they focus on network ties and find that a consumer’s engagement with a number of network ties contributes to social trust. It appears that the importance of network ties is gaining recognition, even in the context of trust!