Work-related
"Increases in information availability via the Internet lower the cost of personal initiative involved in participating in some political activities, such as donating money to political campaigns, contacting public officials, and so forth."
Agree/disagree?
It makes sense to my advisors and I...but I'm not so sure whether it makes sense to anyone else. What I am trying to get at is whether Internet usage influences the extent to which people engage in various types of political activities.
Agree/disagree?
It makes sense to my advisors and I...but I'm not so sure whether it makes sense to anyone else. What I am trying to get at is whether Internet usage influences the extent to which people engage in various types of political activities.
posted by petya at 2/23/2006 06:39:00 AM
20 Comments:
It certainly lets people who care engage in politics to a greater extent. I'm not sure lowered cost of entry into the political market really affects people who never cared in the first place, or even those who are marginally interested.
This is a purely anecdotal observation, btw.
anon, i agree with you on the no-effect on non-interested users. or, i think that the effect might be negative. as people have more control over what they read on the internet, it becomes even easier for people who are not interested in politics to completely tune out. thanks for posting.
Agree based on personal experience.
I have never written a letter to a government representative. Nor have I ever called one of their offices.
But I have written emails to my representatives in the house and senate because it is easy to do so (sad, and telling, I admit). I have received a few replies, btw.
The internet removed enough friction for me to get in the game of voicing my opinion outside of the ballot box. I can quickly get from reading the NY Times website, for example, to the House website(http://www.house.gov/writerep/)
and write a message.
I would agree that internet access decreases the cost of some forms of political participation. I have to wonder, though, if internet-based political participation is simply a shift away from other forms of activism. I personally would guess that inefficacy, rather than cost of initiative, is the major factor affecting political participation.
Are you doing a statistical analysis?
sonyphone, your experience is an example of how i've been thinking about it.
which, in fact, is very similiar to what maschas is referring to. in a way, what the internet is providing is online substitutes for some types of offline activities (contacting officials is an almost perfect substitute).
maschas, yes, i will be doing statistical analysis. my design is a bit up in the air at this point due to data limitations. i am not looking at online activities, though. i am looking at the influence of internet access on traditional forms of political participation. could you please say a bit more about the relationship between efficacy, internet use and political participation? i know that people have made the argument that political efficacy is a reliable predictor of political participation. are you saying that the internet increases people's sense if political efficacy? or that people with higher levels of political efficacy are more likely to use the internet and therefore, internet usage is more of an intervening rather than an independent factor?
Most definitely it does Petya...I actually wrote a 12 page paper citing the development of the press since the 1760's in both England, France, and America through the 1980's, and then the transference of the political arena to the Internet and how it provides an immediate, more participatory forum for political engagement...keep up the good work!
Depends on what you mean by "engaged." It certainly lowers the cost and intertia of taking some politically-inspired actions. OTOH, I'm pretty sure that, at least in terms of gaining attention of lawmakers, email and online polls and the like are pretty low on the list of priorities, as opposed to traditional methods like telephone, fax, letters and lobbyists :-) Whether it provides effective engagement remains to be seen.
Just remember that The Internet only lowers the cost of engagement for certain types of people. The web (particularly online communities) is still a very white, upper-middle class activity. I notice that most political web pages break along Left/Right or Democrat/Republican lines. We don't see as much identity politics (e.g., class- or race-based mobilization) in cyberspace, do we? Maybe the gay community is an exception.
I really don't see MoveOn.org/the blogosphere/The Internet as this democratizing thing. Among the middle-class, I think it enhances the "free-rider" problem by making people who are essentially non-participants feel like they're doing something. Among minorities and the poor, I think the movement of political debate to what is essentially a private forum has only excluded them further.
Re: political efficacy. After the past two presidential elections, do people still have this?
FYI, maschas, asking someone at a big research school, if they will be doing a statistical analysis is a bit like asking a penguin if he'll be having the fish for dinner.
Only an East Coast Liberal would think there might be epistemological approaches other than quantitative, statistically-analyzed research. Cheers!
"could you please say a bit more about the relationship between efficacy, internet use and political participation? i know that people have made the argument that political efficacy is a reliable predictor of political participation. are you saying that the internet increases people's sense if political efficacy?"
I'm saying that the primary reason people are not politically active is because they don't believe political activity produces any results. So I'm wondering if the lowered cost of political activity will make a difference if the same portion of the population still regards it as useless.
Andrew: I was actually just speaking to a certain someone in the Maryland American Government program about this very thing. The balance between theory and medthod in the social sciences.
Ok, this makes sense. What are the implications though? If people with high sense of political efficacy have increasingly easier access to politically relevant information...should we expect any significant changes in the ways people do/think about politics? I was thinking that we should probably expect increases in the significance of interest group/issue politics. Also, changes in the power-dynamics among various knowledge brokers: intellectuals, NGOs, interest groups, the media....?
Oh, and as far as balancing theory and methods is concerned...forget about it. From what I've experienced here, you must pick a side and stick with it. Or do what I did: sell your soul to the devil and start crunching numbers.
andrew, did you get my email? drinks tomorrow (sunday) night?
I'm actually just not convinced that party organization and finance are causal factors in election outcomes. I'm convinced all party behavior is reactive, parties respond to social and economic circumstances in a given society.
I'd say the lowered cost--both in accessibility and in information (including archived information)--increases participation. Since the supply has not reached a limit, we can assume that more and more participation will occur unless something chills the demand.
Totalitarian states are attempting to limit the accessibility of the internet and its information and impose steep costs on participants. This is certainly not to increase participation or enhance personal initiative.
Furthermore, I'd say that the lack of limits on information and ease of accessibilty (and participation) has created a very dynamic model. Blogs, for example.
Left wing DailyKos is the most popular e political site by far, and has a very interactive, free-wheeling design, easily the best (IMO) on the web. It has had considerable effect at organizing it's side (and, ironically, the other side). It even has US Senators visiting (and writing) at times. It's what, 6 years old?
Katherine Harris' nomination and subsequent withdrawl for SCOTUS was a level of participation and organization that effectively reached the cabinet of the current administration. This was initially described as an 'conservative implosion' by the MSM...until it worked.
Curious as to which political aisle in the US benefits most with this free accessibility.
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