after or before. i believe what we do is as we are obligated -- >> do you agree we ought to be you reobject believe gate fund brs you do sna? >> in general i think we worked well with congress over the years to ensure we're spending the money as congress intends. >> you agree it's helpful for congress to know about the use of funds and justifications? >> sir, i'm telling you we deobligate money from time to time. i would bet all offices do. when we do, we report it. >> do you believe that this actually deobligating these funds and reusing them decreases the need for new budget authority in the relevant accounts? >> no, not necessarily, sir. >> do you think this money ought to be returned to the taxpayer if it's deobligated? >> it depends on the issue, sir. we are living within the budget and obligations that we have. it depends on the issue. >> gentleman's time is expired. thank you. >> mr. chairman, i would like my

friend to join me in a kinesthetic cha-cha. >> we have a club in chicago. >> oh, okay. >> miss jackson, thanks very much for being with us today. before i let you go, i want to ask one additional question. under the renewable fuel standard, epa is required to publish the required volume obligations for certainly fuel categories. and the proposed volume of biomass diesel specified in the june 2011 proposed rule omitted from the final rule published in december. so what was there in june for the volume for diesel biomass was not in the final report in december. i was just curious, is that an oversight, or was there some other explanation for that?

>> sir, no, i don't know a fact sheet on that. can we get you an answer to the question after the hearing? >> yeah. i would appreciate that very much if we could get that answer. thank you again for being with us. we appreciate you and ms. bennett taking the time to be here. with that, the hearing is adjourned, and the record will remain open for ten days for any additional materials to be submitted. thank you. now a look at social media and it's effect on presidential campaigns. it's a partnership with the washington center and george

mason university. lee rainy is the direct of the pugh research center of the internet and life project. it's focused on the road to the white house with a look at the issues sxeefts shaping the current campaign as well as historical perspective from past presidential elections. this is just under 90 minutes. >> auto behalf of the students joining us from george mason university in fairfax, virginia, and to my students participating in the washington center program, we want to well cam lee rainy, the director of the pugh research center internet and american life project. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me, steve. >> we'll get right to student questions from sarah keller at the washington center at ball state university. sarah, we'll begin with you. >> first of all, thank you for joining us this afternoon. my question has to do with the obama campaign, obviously, used the internet in a way that no campaign had previously.

do you think coming up in the 2012 election that the potential or the republican candidate will have to use the internet in the same way to have a chance against the obama administration? >> we at pugh internet do surveys every november right after elections have occurred, and so we did a survey in late 2008, and we did a similar s survey in late 2010. one of the most striking things we saw was the change that occurred in the partisan sflirmt online politics in the two years. you're exactly right, sarah. in 2008 the obama campaign owned the internet. it was using social media in a way no other candidacy had done before it. it was striking because the obama campaign tied it it to its very strong support among young people. they use technologies that young people are particularly enthusiastic about, and it was a virtuous circle occurring in 2008. by 2010, though, republicans had

pretty much caught up to use of the tools and enthusiasm for the tools. it gave us good indications that it wasn't so much the nature of the politics that obama practiced. you know, he was a liberal in the way he was running, so the internet isn't pro-liberal because by 2010, all of the energy in social media had sort of transferred to conservatives. they were the most likely to use twitter and the most enthusiasm about using facebook. they were reporting better outcomes and active about those spaces in ways that democrats and liberals were not. as the republicans and conservatives caught up to liberals in 2010, it sort of set the stage for this election. so i think you're right in the premise of your question that the republican candidate will probably be as aggressive in social media and using the internet as the obama campaign hopes to be, but then it also

depends, of course, on the audience for that stuff. as the republicans have sort of a message that appeals to older voters and people that are not not necessarily internet enth e enthusiasts, it might be a message that doesn't resonate as well if it's a message aimed at younger people. both thirngs are going on. >> we'll have a place out. >> before you ask your first question, though, brad how do you use the internet what about twit e-myspace or other outlets. >> first of all, my primary reason for using those media

outlets is just social and to network and to stay connected with past classmates and co-workers. really, i don't use it exclusively to get news. i really keep up any news and civic engagement on the internet to politico, roll call, the hill, because there's so many cases where something ends up on twitter, and it ends up being 1,000% false. so to spend any time looking at those websites for actual news and information i find is a complete waste of time, and if anything is going to be detrimental to me as a potential voter. that's why there were some things ice socially networking and things i use nor fuse and politics. everything has a place. >> fair enough. pretty typical? >> absolutely. the one thing that brad is a little bit more strong on is his

aversion to thinking about social media as a venue for politics because, you know, there's been information or there's highly partisan stuff or things. most people are very much tuned in the same way he is. it's a social space much more than it's a political space. it's not so much a place where they deliberately go to gather news or to hear what's news. they watch it it if their friends are referring to it and things like that. they're skeptical in the ways that brad is about some of the information they encounter. they're not necessarily thinking it's the first place to stop and the primary medium to do politics. >> brad, we'll stay with you, and your question. >> if the trends we've seen since the '90s and especially the past five to ten years continue, which i don't see any reason to see they won't, how will the reporting stay professional because unlike a newspaper, it's hard for websites to fund a staff of

world class journalists who actually have the time to fact-check and source-check and to conduct interviews and conduct research as opposed to bloggers who are just going to hear a rumor from someone on twitter and post it again? i can't tell you how many times these sports websites like blogs that put a trade rumor on there and it's completely false. if these kind of outlets take over political journalism, how is there any credibility in information that people receive in 20 years? >> that's a good point. i'm wondering how to answer that question. if you can take a step back and explain your earlier years as a reporter for usa news and world report, a magazine p many used to read and now is a digital magazine. the process of news gathering back then and what we see today. >> the process isn't all that different, particularly at the highest levels of covering politics. there are people who are spending their lives on the bus and on the plane and in the auditoriums that candidates are.

there are cram crews following them around just in the ways that were very common when i was in the road in the 1980s looking at things. brad touched on a really important, large, civic issue, though. there was a big report issued by the staff, the federal communications commission, actually in the fall last year that talked about the decline of likely interest in covering civic spaces online, because the internet has disaggregated everything. financial news goes to financial sites and sports news goes to sport sites and neighborhood news goes to neighborhood sites. the bundles that were the primary makeup of newspapers and tv stations and ray stations, they bundled material today. so in a sense the crossword puzzle and sports coverage were sub sid dieses somebody in city hall or watching the zoning meeting. now when they have their own

websites and ties to the advertising community, there's a constituency for covering city hall and the sfat house. there is in congress and although the federal level. there's a tiered system coming into being why politics gets a lot of coverage. a lot of people are on the road talking about politics. stuff that happens in communities and stuff happening in statehouses is not getting the attention it used to, and it's hard to think about who are the natural financial allies, who will advertise and help support the correspondents who are covering that stuff? it's a big concern. so some foundations, for instance, have stepped in and sicivic-related information and coverage because they understand where newspapers in particular struggle at the local level. the other people that brad makes is an interesting one. as the eco-system changes, there are more partisan voices and people determined to promote

their point of view, their team in this environment. it's harder to find neutral sources or sources like the sources we try to be at u.s. news where you're sort of independent and you sort of take account of all points of view. you don't cheer for one side as posed to another side. even the most strike thing happening with audiences is even though organizations try to live by those traditional cannons of journalism, a lot of people watch news now thinking they're rooting for somebody. they're on somebody's team. there's a suspicion and fear and some firm beliefs that journalists are taking sides. >> fob follows this more closely tha bob, my colleague at george mason university. let's turn to you for either your perspective andr student questions. >> i'd like to get the students involved right away. i have a very good question from nicole. >> my question is, what social media strategies will be most

effective for candidates to utilize during this upcoming election? >> well, what we see with a lot of social ised it's not so much one particular thing or one particular platform. it's the blended character of how people u you might remember that president obama or candidate obama at that time announced his vice presidential pick in a text. he sent out a text message to people who had signed up to get text alerts from him that joe biden was going to be his choice. that got covered immediately by all of the traditional press, and it got covered in all the social media. there are ways to make these platforms blend together, and that's actually the way people use them as well. you don't say you get one set of things from social media and another set of things from newspapers and a third number of things from newspapers. people use multiple platforms and sources, and so the best strategy, the one that seems to

work most in politics, is being available in all kinds of places and all kinds of ways because you never exactly know the moment that somebody in the audience will engage with you. being in the most places with the most opportunity for people to run into your material is probably the best strategy. >> we'll stay with george mason. bob, another question. >> yeah. i actually do have a question for lee, because i know there are a lot of questions on social media. as i think about it back in 2004 of the mass audience became familiar with the importance of political blogs as a campaign tool. in 2008 barack obama made social media a by-word of campaigning. in terms of the changes, one of the major things that happened since then is the development importance of mobile web, smartphones. a sense that now people use the internet anyplace anytime. i wondered if this change in

audience behavior, lee, if you have seen any implications of it this, for political behavior in campaigns. >> we just began to pick up the most interesting elements of this in our work after the 2010 election. about a quarter of those who are paying attention to politics and were voters in that election used their mobile device in one way, shape or form for the c campai campaign. they declare they voted and let their friends know by putting a picture at the polling sites. sometimes they had text exchanges with pals or checking in to see what was going on. sometimes they got alerts from candidates that were sent as e-mails to their phones, and sometimes they were using apps, you know, and every campaign now has an app. people are going to have a much more direct relationship with candidates that they care about by signing up for the particular stuff that matters to them.

so the mobile environment is actually doing exactly what you said. it's making more information available p in more places, and people can access it at the time and moment that they care about. the other thing it's doing is sort of re-establishing a direct link between candidates and citizens through the apps environment. there's a big debate about whether the apps environment eventually will overtake the wide-open web environment that came to prominence in the computer era, the computer base that's sort of fixed the computer error. we're going to see changes in people's strategies to get information. my guess is that for the time being for the foreseeable future is a supplement rather than a direct challenge to the information that's coming from tra dishl sources on traditional platforms and that people are gathering up through traditional websites. >> in structuring this class and looking at american politics, i wanted to focus on the role of media and i want to give

historical perspective to how the media changed over the years. sarah is up next with a question for lee rainy. sarah, go ahead. >> my question is actually bout if there's a negative impact of all the new media. i know for example presidential candidate newt gingrich want tovs a colony on the moon and this is a youtube sensation. does that put too much pressure on candidates that unimportant things they say become the focus and do we lose the real message because we're too busy tweeting dumb things they say? >> it's an interesting point. we talked about the invisible primary. we don't have that anymore. >> hardly anything is invisible. there are people walking down the street now who if they see a candidate will whip out the

iphone and take pictures and see why the candidate is in their neighborhood and stuff like that. there is not invisibility through any major audience now. we're all sort of mini-celebrities because any one of us can be a viral you toob moment under the right or wrong circumstances. we have 24-hour cable news. it became something that people talked about nonstop. but the arrival of the internet into that new space has made it something where every moment, every utterance, almost possible demand of the campaign gets picked apart and assessed and blogged about and tweeted about and facebooked about it. candidates don't have an auditioning phase anymore to try things out on the road for small audiences and not risk saying something really silly to it a wide audience.

now they're blended tomorrow. when you're in a room with a couple of piece, there's a possibility what happens in that room goes to the world. and so i think it's put a lot more pressure on candidates to be sort of on their guard and to be very scripted and screened and things. it's obviously changed the way that journalism is practiced. when can you step aside and file your story when the possible at any given moment the world is going to change? >> christopher conway who is a student at st. josepjoseph's university. we'll go to you, next. >> hi, mr. rainy. atd questioned for you. due to the demographics of sberts sber net use, how will they move guard as candidates spend more time and money on online mediums. >> when you say democracy moving guard, elaborate on that point. >> i'm referring to what politic

put out there or people with more pony and certainly demographics are more likely to use these websites such as twitter. >> wiell, forever. as long as there's studies, and i think the professor is one of the people that noticed this pattern. civic engagement has been dominates by people that have more education and more income than other silt zens in their communities. that's a truism for generation. we did a survey in the middle of the twt 2008 race that tried to look at the online environment and compare it to the offline environment just to see what the premise of your question s-the right one. we found that for a lot of thing in the online environment that look like things until the offline environment, signing an onlynn petition and engaging with a news organization. in the on older days it was

writing a left to the ted for or write an e-mail to the editor. when we plooked at a has not full of things offpalestine and online in that ekwifl lent. we saw the same stratification. people were much more likely to be civilly edge gauged thaen people with lesser education and amounts of money. the one exception was in social media spaces. the people who are active in politics and civics and social media places and in social networks sites and blogging and youtube and things like that. people were atvy different income levels. we're participating at the same level. there was a lot more differences between races and ethnic groups and there was more between generations. that was true in 2008, and we're

anxious to see whether that equaler of the common space and civic space carries through to later yeears. in social media younger people are more active, and younger people haven't completed their educations or ernlgs power. it may be in the years to some, we'll see that social stratification reashert itself. these young people as they age will get richer and better educated and they will sort of separate out from others who are not necessary involved in civic spaces. right now there's real hope that social media is leveling the playing field in civic life in a way we haven't seen in a long time. >> it really struck me bh you talk about use of social media. it has been so much more young people, that for a long time people talked about the baby boomers as a generation unlike

all others and fooled them throughout their life spans as we're gentling going off to our rests. i think the notion of an internet generation or digital generation that auto live in this environment, people born 8 1980 or larter. that needs to be fostered for quite a while and brings with it all these new hablts thar just part of their lives. so i'd like love to have you comments on that. i don't want you to steal the thunder from my students, so i'd like to turn to chris clark with a question for you.

one of the other questioners was talking about his own habits of understand looking at politics in the social media. i think that's the norm. social media is impnt elites talk to each other. the campaigns talk to other leaders in the physical community using blogging tools and social networking sites and twitter and text as well as traditional methods, and its a way now that they've just

supplemented and complemented the flow of communication at the most elite level in the culture. people who care a lot about politics and are partisan and they want things to happen in the policy arena. those people are using social media a lot. the people who are much more sort of removed from politics and are a little bit more indifferent to politics aren't using social media this way. you can imagine scenarios where it gets closer to election day or closer to big events like debates or something like that, they will take cues from their friends so there's a mobilization component to social media. think about your friends that do a lot of politics. you do it more than their friends do. people will follow you. people say this is important to

me, or i thought this element of the debate had really striking things to it, you can sort of pull people into politics through your friendship with them. that's how stuff gets down now that originate in traditional media and stopped when the tv screen stopped at the radio dial. >> let me direct our audience and students to the website which is pughinternet.org with a lot of information. there's about 75% of americans use the internet for news and political information. put that in number perspective compared to 2008 or 2006. >> the number has continued to go up to the point of the last question. it will go up more in 2012 and more many 2016 in part because it's the tool that people use now.

it's a default in the life and there's news gathering online. other parts of the story is the surprise side of the story. news organizations now are very eager to have all of what they know displayed on the webb. their correspondence blog. they set up tweets. they file to their facebook pages, and obviously the move from the analog environment to the digital environment in newsrooms has been one of the most striking things that's occurred in the editorial process in the past generation and parties and political actors think this is a space where important business is done. by the very fact of them being there doing their work there, they will pull more people in. hoefr many people are involved in the paul tigs, they will use the internet. that's where so much gets transacted. >> he's at the washington center in washington, d.c.

isaiah, you're next. >> hi. i was reading earlier about a trend called cyber bulkenization where people use the internet it to validate their own beliefs and become immersed in virtual worlds. do you see that hindering our democracy, or do you see that decreasing in the future with the internet? >> there are actually two ways that people are worried about this, and it's a huge question about the impact of the internet on our political culture. the first way is people sort of congregating in their own information spaces. they go to the news sources or partisan sources that gives them the information that matches their point of view. they won't share facts or they won't share information that might disagree with their point of views. that's one concern. the other concern now relates to social networks. if you can sort of identify people who believe like you do and only hang out with them, you're not only encountererring information that matches your

point of view, but you only deal with people that share your point of view. ha that tends to reinforce your thinking that the whole world things like you do. right now our research is not conclusive on this. we actually see that the most aggressive users of the internet, the people who are most active online, the most likely to use social media actually are more aware r arguments and pieces of information. they collect stuff from all kinds of places and they go into material that doesn't match the way that they want the world to work and they think the way the world works. the people who were bulkenizing to the degree it's happening are not going into politics. they're removed from political discourse or political activity. they have a lot more stuff to do in their lives. they have options and don't care abou