“The First Amendment Center has supported an annual national survey of American attitudes about the First Amendment since 1997. The State of the First Amendment: 2012 is the 16th survey in this series. This year’s annual survey repeats some of the questions that have been administered since 1997 and includes new questions on the role of religion in the presidential election, attitudes about government’s control of the Internet, and opinions about the use of copyrighted material on the Internet. This report summarizes the findings from the 2012 survey, and where appropriate, depicts how attitudes have changed over time. The first section of this report presents the survey methodology used to conduct the State of the First Amendment research. The second section highlights the key findings from the 2012 project. The final section presents the complete survey results including question wording and trend data.”