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90 POLITICSThose who had the civic sense or personal motivation to
participate via traditional methods simply reappeared in
the new forum.
The general mobilizing effects of teleconferencing or
high-speed Internet access seem nearly impossible to
prove. Most studies to date, including the Pew Research
Center for the People and Press’s 1996 and 2002 stud-
ies, conclude that the Internet, thus far, acts more often
as a “re-enforcement” agent, which merely changes the
venue in which political participation takes place (Pew
Research Center, 1996, 2002). Richard Davis points out
that most political activities on the Internet are electronic
analogs of activities carried out via older media such as
television, newspaper, radio, and mail. In fact, Davis fur-
ther argues that the Internet could lead to greater politi-
cal apathy by providing a politically apathetic generation
of young Americans with individually tailored, nonpolit-
ical news (see Sunstein for a contrary viewpoint). How-
ever, the specific mobilizing or re-enforcement tendencies
of high-speed Internet connections and audiovisual en-
hancements cannot yet be determined, because no strong
evidence for either argument yet exists. These conclusions
echo the findings of scientific studies of participation con-
ducted over the past 30 years. Participation is skewed
towards the well off, well educated, and politically mo-
tivated (Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993; Verba et al., 1995).
New modes of participation, such as the Internet, are un-
likely to change this state of affairs.POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS:
THE INTERNET AS A TOOL
OF MOBILIZATION
“Intermediary” organizations—such as political parties,
candidate organizations, interest groups, and the mass
media—are not hampered by the logic of collective action
or by the irrationality of political action. Quite the oppo-
site: for these organizations (as well as for political candi-
dates and entrepreneurs), the benefits of political activity
outweigh the costs; otherwise they would not exist (Olson,
1971; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). It is no surprise, then,
that it is among these pre-existing organizations that the
Internet has proved to be a truly revolutionary force. The
Internet is a tool to more efficiently and more cheaply
communicate their positions to the mass public and mo-
bilize citizens for political action. In this respect, then, the
Internet will change mass democracies, not by transform-
ing the public, but by transforming elites, making it easier,
cheaper, and quicker for candidates to mobilize support-
ers and for interest groups to recruit members. Note that
“elites” refers to a far broader segment of the population
than just the moneyed or politically powerful. It may also
include antiestablishment groups, such as the WTO ac-
tivists, who very successfully organized via the Internet.Campaign Use of the Internet
In the years between 1992 and 1996, campaign Web
sites went from novelty to necessity. In 1996, Bob Dole
concluded the second of his Presidential debates with
Bill Clinton by plugging his campaign Web site. The
era of the campaign Web site as an integral part of thecampaign process had begun. Easy-to-follow guidebooks
for setting up a campaign Web site are readily available
(Democracyonline.org’s “Online Campaigning: A Primer”)
and the Federal Election Commission has clarified the
place of campaign Web sites in the campaign finance
system (Corrado, 2000). By the 2000 campaign, virtually
every candidate for federal office and many state and local
candidates had a campaign Web site.
Recent elections have shown that the Internet is a
new and important source of campaign funding (Thorn-
burg, 2001). In the 2000 presidential election, Republi-
cans George W. Bush and John McCain and Democrats
Bill Bradley and Al Gore used the Internet to solicit funds,
with McCain raising more than $500,000 the first day his
Web site came online. Internet donations are a small part
of overall campaign funding but they have the potential
to become much larger, because of low cost and ability to
target supporters. In most forms of solicitation, the more
people the candidate wishes to reach, the higher the cost.
However, there is very little difference in cost for a candi-
date having 10 or 100,000 people view a Web site. Simi-
larly, the Internet provides a way for candidates to better
target supporters. An example would be e-mail lists; they
can be set up to better find those who support the can-
didate and are likely to give him or her money. Because
it is so cheap and so effective, the Internet will make it
easier for less well-known candidates, parties, and groups
to make their voice heard in elections.
Early campaign Web sites, in many cases, were noth-
ing more than electronic brochures, Web-formatted ver-
sions of the same leaflets that campaign volunteers had
previously passed out on street corners. In short, politi-
cians failed to produce “sticky” Web sites that increased
the amount of time spent at a site and the frequency with
which users returned to that site. In their study of both
political and e-commerce Web pages, James Sadow and
Karen James (1999) found that the political sites in 1996
and 1998 lacked the interactive elements that would make
the sites more effective in drawing surfers and retaining
interest. Citing several studies of e-commerce sites, their
study claims that greater interactivity, defined as “the ex-
tent to which users can participate in modifying the form
and content of a computer mediated environment in real-
time,” leads to more positive attitudes about specific Web
sites and a greater ability to attract consumers (also see
Ariely, 1998; Wu, 1999).
Two short years later, the world of the Internet cam-
paign could not be more different. Few Web sites shy away
from such interactive features today. Success stories such
as those cited at the beginning of this chapter demon-
strate the potential of the Internet as a tool for recruit-
ing volunteers, controlling press coverage, and amassing
a campaign war chest. More recent studies of campaign
use of the Web demonstrate that the sites have become
graphically rich and highly interactive, with significant
issue content and an overwhelmingly positive tone (Greer
& LaPointe, 2001). The “rational” campaign, today, is par-
tially an Internet campaign.Individualized Campaigns?
The ability to create an “enhanced” Web site is a double-
edged sword. On one hand, building in audio and video