Replacing professional filters with social ones

Gleaned this from the AFP Mediawatch blog - it's an article in The New York Times analysing the way in which American youths are processing information. Seems forward emails, blogs, facebook groups etc are the way to go to share information. I believe the term is "viral", though strangely enough, the reporter here doesn't use the term ...

March 27, 2008
Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On
By BRIAN STELTER

Senator Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s final State of the Union address — almost five minutes of Mr. Obama’s talking directly to the camera — elicited little attention from newspaper and television reporters in January.

But on the medium it was made for, the Internet, the video caught fire. Quickly after it was posted on YouTube, it appeared on the video-sharing site’s most popular list and Google’s most blogged list. It has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, been linked by more than 500 blogs and distributed widely on social networking sites like Facebook.

It is not news that young politically minded viewers are turning to alternative sources like YouTube, Facebook and late-night comedy shows like The Daily Show. But that is only the beginning of how they process information.

According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one. READ MORE