People can get involved in their community in many ways, and social media is a useful tool for organization and collaboration. In order to unite, people must engage in political conversations and be aware and determined. Robert Putnam, a political scientist and public policy professor at Harvard University, discusses this idea of “social capital”, and argues that it is in decline. Putnam’s article, titled “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America”, is slightly outdated as it was published in 1995. Putnam discusses a number of factors that he believes contributes to the decline of civic engagement, including the role of women in the workforce and poor economic times, however he argues the main cause of the decline of social capital is increased viewership and popularity of television. Putnam elaborates on his supposition:
Each hour spent viewing television is associated with less social trust and less group membership, while each hour reading a newspaper is associated with more. An increase in television viewing of the magnitude that the United States has experienced in the last four decades might directly account for as much as one quarter to one-half of the total drop in social capital. (Putnam