Pew: All politics isn’t social just yet, but it’s getting there

More Americans are posting about political causes and activities to social media outlets now than they were during the 2008 election, showing increased levels of comfort around using social media to advance civic causes, according to a new Pew Research Center report set to release late Wednesday.

The Pew report highlights changes in social media over the first four years of Barack Obama’s presidency, showing how people are more likely to post to sites like Twitter and Facebook (s fb). However, these dramatic increases aren’t all that surprising. Twitter was barely a mainstream source for news in 2008, and Facebook wasn’t much older at that point. Now both sites have become much more accepted as major advertising and communications platforms, so the increased participation there makes sense.

However, it’s worth noting how people use these platforms around civic engagement, because these types of participation could impact the business models of companies…