There's a joke quote circulating on Facebook that goes like this: "'Your relentless political Facebook posts finally turned me around to your way of thinking,' said nobody, ever."

The funny thing is, that might not actually be true.

"People whose friends post some (or a lot of) political content on social networking sites are much more likely to say that they have changed their mind about a political issue or become more involved with a political issue after reading/discussing them on a social network (compared with people whose friends don’t post much political content)," Aaron Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, told me Tuesday via email.

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Joshua Boschee is an openly gay candidate for public office in a socially conservative state, but observers say he's got a real shot at becoming one of Fargo, North Dakota's next representatives in the state legislature.

Boschee's home state of North Dakota has, according to one study, the lowest proportion of same-sex couples in the United States. It's a conservative state, although "conservative" means something different in the only state in the Union with a state-owned bank and a state-owned grain mill and elevator.

The 30-year-old activist and assistant director of leadership and organizations at Minnesota State University is a special case in part because he and his campaign manager say social media is offering him a competitive edge. People he might not otherwise know how to find in a city like Fargo, such as people who respond to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues but aren't already a part of LGBT-focused communities there, he can find on Facebook instead. And when he builds his constituency anywhere, he says, he immediately sees those persuadable voters following up to find out more about him online.

Google rolled out a new service this week that enables advertisers to target their audience specifically by congressional district. The new functionality adds a level of granularity that isn't available through Facebook, ... Read More

Despite draconian restrictions on Internet access, the Iranian regime has not succeeded in preventing its citizens from using Facebook. Now a semi-official news agency reports that the head of the cyber-pollice tacitly admitted its failure to block the social networking site, when it asked Facebook for help in fighting cyber crimes and pornography. Read More

The government of Uzbekistan's repressive policies coupled with widespread self-censorship are creating a deeply insular society, which makes access to a safe place on the Internet psychologically and ideologically important, posits the author of a new paper. In other words, people are forgetting basic democratic values as they avoid reading anything political, lest they be discovered by government monitors and punished with a loss of personal freedom. Read More