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88 POLITICSparticipation in forums such as Barber’s electronic town
hall, especially as a faster and more interactive Internet
allows more flexibility and greater ease of use. Two
areas of enhancement in particular, the increasing use of
audiovisual components in Web pages and the increasing
spread of residential high-speed Internet connections (via
both cable and phone lines), should allow citizens to par-
ticipate in virtual local government assemblies or neigh-
borhood forums with the same effectiveness and clarity as
if all participants had actually gathered in the same phys-
ical meeting space. Thus, participation itself might have a
tangible benefit—entertainment and enjoyment—even if
it does not translate into direct “benefits” from a politi-
cal outcome. In the next section, we chart the advance of
these technologies and speculate as to what effects these
advances might have on political participation, town hall
meetings, interactive government, and online deliberation
and discussion.AudioVisual Services
Like the transition from newspaper to radio and then to
television during the first half of the 20th century, the In-
ternet has undergone in the past five years a transition
from a primarily text- to image-based form of communi-
cation. Increasing bandwidth, short attention spans, and
a need to differentiate a site from its competitors have
driven this increase in audio and video online. As was
the case with the first Web pages, audiovisual plug-ins
began to appear on large commercial sites with plenti-
ful resources, as well as on the Web sites of educational
institutions. And just as the second generation of HTML
editors made writing a Web page as easy as typing in a
word processor, the newest generation of editors is slowly
democratizing these technologies by lowering the learn-
ing curve required to incorporate them. The first decade
of the 21st century will likely see the reinvention of the
Web as a multimedia communications center.
The move to augment text with voice has been slow (in
Internet time) but steady. Common e-mail applications
such as Eudora and Outlook have for several years in-
cluded audio plug-ins, allowing users of a single appli-
cation to exchange messages in this way. The lack of an
industry standard has slowed the popularization of voice
messaging, allowing it to be overshadowed by more recent
innovations such as Web telephony, music downloads,
and even online wake-up calls. Although many netizens
are just becoming accustomed to exchanging electronic
voice mail and publishing musical compositions online,
power users have begun to tinker with online video. The
ability to publish home videos and self-produced ani-
mations, combined with the growing popularity of DVD
recorders and other such devices, opens up doors previ-
ously unimaginable.
As these multimedia tools are simpler to use, and
broadband connections become more common, multime-
dia creations will become commonplace. This is already
evident at political Web sites: a study by Kamarck and
Nye (1999) found that, even by 1998, most Congressional
candidates’ Web sites incorporated audiovisual, multime-
dia, and interactive services as part of their content (see
also Wu, 1999). The move to a more visually compelling
Internet presages the day when Web-based politicalcommunications will rival those currently available only
on television and radio.High Speed Internet for Everyone?
A precursor to the use of the Internet as a visually com-
pelling medium for political information gathering, how-
ever, is a broadband connection. Although multimedia-
enhanced newsgroups, streaming discussion groups, and
even searchable archives of campaign videos are already
available, experiencing them becomes an almost painful
experience without sufficient bandwidth. On the client
side, the race between cable modems and ADSL connec-
tions has brought the price of both services within reach of
those of modest incomes, although not as inexpensive as
was first hoped by Congressional advocates of telecommu-
nications reform in 1996 (as illustrated in the debate over
the 2002 Tauzin–Dingell Broadband Deployment Act).
Whether via coaxial cable or twisted-pair copper,
nearly 25 million Americans have already found their way
onto the high-speed Internet (Horrigan & Rainie, 2002).
As the technologies mature, monthly fees should continue
to fall and the move to ADSL and cable will accelerate.
Will broadband make a difference in the political im-
pact of the Internet? Early indications are that broad-
band access will be decisive. Horrigan and Rainie’s re-
cent study, undertaken as part of the Pew “Internet and
American Life” project, indicates that broadband “trans-
forms” the Internet experience. Broadband users are far
more likely to access the Internet on a daily basis and
are two to three times as likely to use the Internet to col-
lect news, product, travel, and educational information.
Most importantly, for anyone who subscribes to Barber’s
model of a “strong” democracy consisting of active, par-
ticipatory, and community-minded citizens, broadband
users are far more likely to becontent providers, setting
up Web pages, storing photos online, and sharing infor-
mation with others (Horrigan & Rainie, 2002, pp. 12–14).
Again, for these users, the direct benefits of “participating”
(in this case, setting up a Web site) seem to exceed the
costs. However, this same study shows that broadband ac-
cess is heavily skewed toward the same groups that have
been traditionally advantaged in the political realm—well-
educated, higher income, and now technologically savvy
segments of the population. Far from democratizing, the
Internet might even exacerbate income, educational, and
racial disparities.A Case Study in the Internet as a Tool
of Mass Participation: E-voting
In the March 2000 Arizona Democratic Presidential pri-
mary, the first-ever binding Internet vote in a Presiden-
tial primary, a vast number of Arizona Democrats partic-
ipated relative to previous elections (Chiu, 2000). Many
speculated that Internet voting mobilized the electorate
and provided lower costs to voting—thus creating a higher
turnout. If we believe that some of the high turnout for
Arizona’s primary can be attributed to Internet voting,
than electronic referenda could gain support as an un-
tapped resource for furthering political participation.
Online voting could have a substantial impact on
the greatest flaw of the suffrage: decreased turnout. In