That’s, in essence, how the “social media generation” deals with with political news and news in a broader sense. For the first time, social networks and blogs are playing a major role in a presidential campaign in the USA. Facebook, myspace, most of the web 2.0 sites that we use today didn’t exist 4 years ago, during the precedent elections, or with a limited audience.

But as of February 2008, they respectively have 8.6, 17.7 millions average daily visitors.

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.

“There are lots of times where I’ll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends,” said Lauren Wolfe, 25, the president of College Democrats of America. “I’d rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story.”

Go check out the New York Times article for more details.

Sorry for the almost unrelated Easter photo.