| It is generally agreed that Internet adoption and diffusion
are occurring more rapidly than for almost any other technology
in history, and the Internet is becoming indispensable for
many sectors of the population. Among Americans online, more
than 80% say the Internet plays a vital role in their daily
routines (Fallows, 2004). Given these trends, social scientists
have begun exploring the political and social implications
of Internet use. Of particular interest are comparisons between
offline and online modes of political engagement and whether
Internet users participate in the political system differently
from those offline. Mike Jensen, Jim Danziger and Alladi Venkatesh
explore these issues in their paper Civil Society and
Cyber Society: The Role of the Internet in Community Associations
and Democratic Politics (PDF).
 Based
on empirical analyses of 1,203 respondents, the research team
shows that online participation is not simply an extension
of offline participation, but appears to be a distinct, although
socially embedded, medium in which political behavior takes
place. One of the most important conclusions of their study
is that there is a greater democratization of the political
process online compared to offline. Broadly phrased, their
findings include:
Online practices of community involvement are empirically
distinguishable from offline practices. That is, while
there is a positive correlation between involvement in any
type of community activity, offline or online, and involvement
in any other community activity, online community interactions
are more strongly associated with similar online community
interactions than with their offline counterparts. Those who
are engaged with such online associational contexts as hobby,
political, and religious web sites tend to come from households
that are far more likely to engage in other forms of online
engagements than in such modes of offline associational life
in the community as attending and planning neighborhood events
and holding office in a club.
Political/community-oriented associational practices
cluster separately from the social modes of association. That
is, public-regarding forms of associational life, such as
interacting with an online political group or holding office
in an offline organization, are empirically differentiated
from private-regarding forms of associational life, such as
belonging to an offline club or contacting an online hobby
group.
Both offline democratic engagement and online democratic
engagement with the political system tend to be associated
with political activities within civil and cyber society rather
than those with most social groups or even community-oriented
groups.
There is a notable difference in the predictors of online
and offline political participation. While traditional
markers of Socioeconomic Status (SES) such as income, length
of time living in the community, and age do matter for offline
democratic engagement with the political system, these factors
are not significant in predicting variation on their measure
of online democratic engagement.
A full copy of the paper (PDF) can be found here.
(CRITO Research Spotlight, May 2008)
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