Geographies of Media Use and Social Capital.

This paper has two analytic objectives: estimate the geographic distribution of social capital at the county scale for the United States (U.S.); and explain this spatial distribution of social capital by media activity and socio-demographic characteristics of a locality. To locate hotspots of social capital, we calculate a local indicator of spatial autocorrelation. Higher intensities of social capital are found in the Northeast and the Breadbasket states of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, and the Dakota’s. Lower intensities of social capital are found in the South and de-industrialized Midwest. A thin diagonal band of counties, extending from southern Michigan to west Texas cleaves regional clusters of High-High (HH) and Low-Low (LL) social capital. Variation in social capital across the U.S. is linked to variations in media activity such as television, newspaper, and internet use that enhance and erode rates of local civic engagement, adjusting for critical socioeconomic variables. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]