Paper prepared for presentation at the 1999 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2-5, Atlanta, GA. I wish to thank Dr. Erik Bucy for helpful conversation and guidance on this projects. The errors are mine alone. I gratefully encourage comments to the e
mail address above.
Introduction
The traditional political participation literature has looked at categorizing activities along such lines as active and passive participation. There is a growing body of literature that looks at the political uses of the internet, many focusing on the World Wide Web. Several new research pieces have suggested that use of new media such as talk radio and the internet to become informed and to discuss politics should be considered an active form of participation, even if such use does not result in increased voter turnout.
There seems to be mixed opinions on the possibilities and the realities of using the Internet for political activities, including discussion. This project considered the possibility that usenet newsgroups could be a tool for political participation. It is one part of the internet where messages can be created, read, stored, and shared with an international audience. There are databases of these messages that allow the researcher to study past conversations. The researcher then can choose real world events that might influence conversations and study those times instead of just looking at current events and current discussions.
This paper presents the results of a content analysis of messages posted to two newsgroups, alt.politics.usa.republican and talk.politics.libertarian, during the 1996 presidential campaign. Candidates were supported or denigrated. However, messages were generally negative in tone, with many personal attacks. There were few "conversations" and many mini-monologues. There were few real world political events promoted or organized online. It also presents the results of a survey posted to political and non-political newsgroups. Posters to political newsgroups were more likely to crosspost and to engage in what are considered inappropriate behaviors on most newsgroups such as flaming than were posters to non-political newsgroups.
Literature Review
Political Participation
Verba & Nie (1987) define participation as "activities by private citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection of governmental personnel and/or the actions they take" (p. 2). Conway (1985) defines it similarly as "activities of citizens that attempt to influence the structure of government, the selection of government authorities, or the politics of government. These activities either may be supportive of the existing politics, authorities, or structure, or they may seek to change any or all of these" (Conway, 1985, p.2).
Few people do more than just vote and with each election fewer people are doing even that. Verba & Nie (1987) found that 72% of eligible voters voted in the national election but only 47% participated in local elections. Approximately 25% of the participants in their survey worked on campaigns and only 8% belonged to a political party or organization. Only 15% of their survey participants engaged in two types of political participation.
Participation can be divided into several types: active versus passive, conventional versus unconventional, symbolic versus instrumental (Conway, 1985). Active participation can include voting, writing letters to government officials, working on a campaign by donating time and/or money to a candidate. Passive participation can include being aware of political issues, attending ceremonies or other meetings supportive of the government, following political campaigns, and being aware of government actions and decisions. Norris & Jones (1998) suggest that, as traditional political participation is considered a multi-dimensional concept, there may be more than one dimension to virtual participation.
People participate or not for different reasons. People with specific individual needs will contact government officials to get their needs taken care of. Some have been educated with attitudes that support political participation, or they are in social situations, such as service organizations, where some types of political participation are expected. Participation activities are not all equal; they have different opportunity costs for citizens. Citizens with limited time or financial resources may not be able to participate as much as they would like. Participation is also dampened by the stability of the political and economic system. People with fewer unmet social and economic needs have little need to be involved in politics. Conversely, a realignment of political parties can increase political participation. Activities of others can influence participation. The use of direct mail to solicit funds, organized "get out the vote," and voter registration drives is increasing. The media's coverage or lack of coverage of certain topics and their endorsements of candidates can stimulate citizen interest in elections. An election perceived as close will generate more interest and participation because voters think that their vote really counts (Nimmo & Ungs, 1967; Conway, 1985).
The use of media to become informed has usually been considered a passive activity. With the introduction and spread of new media that allow for two way conversation, such as facilitated by the internet and talk radio, using media can be an active form of involvement in politics. People consider these mediated experiences to be important parts of their civic lives (Bucy, 1999; Davis & Owen, 1998; Slaton & Becker, 1998).
The Internet in Politics
In the more positive descriptions of the use of the Internet in politics, technology is described as being able to promote the development of more democratic forms of government. Citizens will have available more active forms of participation and will be able to develop a more meaningful voice in their government (Norris and Jones, 1998).
Campaigns can establish "cyber-precincts" that use the new communication and information tools provided to work with supporters and volunteers and spread campaign information quickly (Kern, 1997). They can set up online polls to get quick reactions to policies and campaign strategies (Wu & Weaver, 1997). They can pass along personal information that would be filtered out by the media; this personal information may give a more human tone to the campaign and increase citizen interest (Klotz, 1997).
All this means that voters will have a greater choice of information from which to choose, especially from low-budget and low-visibility campaigns which will allow citizens to make more rational decisions. This could lead to more active participation in politics.
There are more pessimistic descriptions of the use of the internet in politics. Politicians can not tell easily whether or not messages are from their constituents. (Maley, 1998) Politicians worry that their e-mail address could be faked and messages made to appear as if sent by the politician. They do not want to be seen as engaging in "spamming" which is the sending of mass unsolicited e-mail messages. (Meeks, 5/5/98) Since the internet gives people new means to find those with similar interests, it is possible that the Internet could create a much more partisan and gridlocked government as each person and their small group looks out for only their own interests instead of considering the larger public or national interest (Bimber, 1997).
The reality is a mixed picture. Candidates often go online to look like they understand the high-tech world and are more modern than their off-line opponents. (Faucheux, 1998) They can provide information that is relatively unfiltered by media gatekeepers; this unfiltered access is something people say they want from political news coverage as well as the internet (Kamarck, 1998; Klotz, 1997; Tedesco, Miller & Spiker, 1999; Whillock, 1997). The major parties and candidates predominate online. They have the funds to develop eye-catching sites; they have the name recognition that might lead an undecided voter to investigate their web site. They can purchase the technical expertise to develop special applications such as online games that let the user interact with information about the candidate rather than just reading press releases (Margolis, Resnick, and Tu, 1997). The information will most likely be targeted at the current supporter to help them become more active rather than at motivating undecided voters. (Dorsey & Green, 1997) Campaigns have experimented with using the Internet to do traditional campaign activities - distribute information, solicit volunteers and contributions but are not comfortable with those activities yet online. However, they have not begun to take full advantage of the interactivity that the web allows or the two way communication (Dulio, Goff, Thurber, 1999). It is not clear from previous research if resources such as Usenet newsgroups and other online communication tools will be used by third parties and smaller campaigns at greater or equal frequency compared to major parties and larger better funded campaigns.
Currently the internet is only available to a few people - those with either the money to buy a computer and pay for internet access or who live in an area where some free access is provided in public spaces such as libraries. The size of the Internet user population that is interested in discussing politics is very small and most people will not run into any political material in their surfing because of the seemingly endless variety of sites to visit. (Corrado & Firestone, 1996) "Virtual Democracy looks more like anarchy than ABC News" (Norris & Jones, 1998, p. 4).
Use of the Internet is limited also to those with the skills to effectively make use of the new communication tools. Access is not enough - users need to learn new skills. (Corrado & Firestone, 1996) One skill people need to learn is how to talk about politics with other people. While two way communication is possible, it is rare. Much online conversation is one-way and consists of platitudes and pronouncements rather than exchanges of ideas. (Whillock, 1997) Actually much public political discourse is unproductive, full of conflict: "People talking without listening, confirming rather than problematizing dogmas, convicting rather than convincing adversaries, passing along responsibility to others for everything that has gone wrong in their lives" (Barber, 1999, p. 40).
Usenet Newsgroups
Online communication is not as rich in sensory information as face to face communication and so is considered more likely to be negative. Because people can participate anonymously, they can be more honest but they can also be more rude and attempt to dominate the conversation (Benson, 1996; James, Wotring, Forrest, 1995; Garramone, Harris and Anderson, 1986). Interaction over time is no guarantee of civil behavior either. Frequent posters on political newsgroups used their messages to tear other posters down, to dominate the discussion, and to drive out dissenting opinion. (Groper, 1996) Instead of informed debate, people made statements or pronouncements, often structured to humiliate others. (Benson, 1996, vanDijk, 1996)
One online resource where two way communication is facilitated is the Usenet network which began in 1979, created by graduate students at Duke University. Many of the first groups were technical, including net.unix-wizards, net.lan, and net.periphs,. However, even at the beginning there were groups focused on hobbies and socializing, including net.auto, net.chess, net.rec.scuba, net.sf-lovers, and net.taxes. (Hauben & Hauben, 1997) There are tens of thousands of newsgroups, not all carried by any one server. Groups appear and disappear with little fanfare, and it is very easy to join and to leave them. People can belong to many newsgroups simultaneously, which may limit the attention and concern they can pay to each. (Jones, 1995; Wellman and Gulia, 1996) There are a vast number of topics being discussed and an immense number of individual messages being sent each day. (Hauben, 1997) The participants "differ widely in cultural and educational background, age, language, and communication skills." (Sallis & Kassabova, 1998, p. 97)
Conversations about politics and myriad other topics can be found online. The emphasis is on the computer user as an active participant (Rafaeli, 1986; Parks and Floyd, 1996). The users create the content in these newsgroups, set the agenda for discussions (Benson, 1996). There are few if any outside editors or reporters. They post their opinions about the candidates; campaigns post information about events; and still other posters encouraged readers to take some action (Hacker, Scott, Howl and Steiner, 1996). People use them to create social networks, to socialize and build friendships. People use the usenet newsgroups to distribute information and to enhance their pleasure and enjoyment of whatever topic is being discussed (Baym, 1995).
Bulletin boards and usenet newsgroups allow people to communicate with people who have similar interests even though they might be physically distant. Online political communication is thought to "promote better citizenship through more participation and communication" (Sakkas quoted in Hacker, Scott, Howl, and Steiner, 1996) because it reduces citizen reliance on traditional media, however one early study found that most of the people participating in online discussions were already the more politically active people (Garramone, Harris, and Pizante, 1986). In 1985 people were using political bulletin boards for general political information and out of curiosity (Garramone, Harris, and Anderson, 1986). Most political discussion is not work related; it is a voluntary leisure activity that many people find exciting (Huckfeldt et al., 1996).
A trade publication talking about the use of the internet for political activities described Usenet newsgroups as "wild and wooly", "a smorgasbord of electronic bulletin boards devoted to topics ranging from the politics of whitewater to fans of shock jock Howard Stern and fuzzy animals", as a place where "participants unfettered by the common courtesy of traditional mail flail away at each other over sins real and imagined", with "a combination of off-the-wall theories and the often vicious flaming" (Berger, 1995, p. 40). Other less colorful descriptions of Usenet newsgroups include being "like a newspaper where everyone's letter to the editor is printed (Hauben, 1997) or a newspaper where the contributors are the editors (Merrill & Ogan, 1996).
There is no monolithic "audience" for online political information. Whillock (1996, 1997) describes an audience of active users and less purposeful browsers or surfers, two groups who use the Internet for different purposes. Wu and Weaver (1997) differentiate between the upscale, educated user and "everyone else". Dorsey and Green (1997) describe four audiences that web page designers need to consider - the party faithful, the legitimately undecided looking for information, people looking for mistakes to embarrass the politicians, and the "non-viewer". Norris and Jones (1998) describe four types of users including one group most likely to seek out political experiences online, which they name the political expressives. The key to all these groups is that the people online are better educated, with higher incomes than the average citizen. They are more likely to be young white males with professional jobs. This can change the tenor of political discussion and activities online. As the online audience begins to more closely resemble the general population, opinions and levels of activity will also more closely resemble the general population. (Hill & Hughes, 1998) This raises the question of whether users of online political resources such as usenet groups will differ from users of non-political resources in how they use the resources.
Research Questions & Hypotheses
This project was designed to begin to answer the following research question and test several hypotheses suggested by the literature.
RQ 1: What types of interactions do the messages posted to political newsgroups contain? Are people conversing, arguing, planning, debating? Or are they just talking?
RQ 2: For what types of political participation are political newsgroups being used?
Methodology and Data
The first part of the project involved a content analysis of messages on two newsgroups, alt.politics.usa.republican and talk.politics.libertarian. The groups are not necessarily representative of political groups or Usenet groups in general. It is impossible to see the entire list of newsgroups that exist. Deja.com, one of the earliest available Usenet archives, does not make available a list of everything they archive; some groups, such as those available from the local news servers or commercial providers such as WebTV, are not archived by Deja.com.
These two groups were chosen for several reasons. They both contained the name of a political party in their names, suggesting some connection to the party or to their use by party supporters. Choosing groups with two party connections would make it likely to attract a mix of partisan views. This was achieved as support for both major part candidates and several third party candidates, including Perot and Browne, were expressed by posters to both of these groups. They received more than a few messages a day. There was little overlap in the people posting to the two groups.The libertarian group was chosen because the literature suggests that third parties might make use of the internet to communicate with members and organize activities, including campaign activities, because of the lower costs and perceived level playing field. Other groups, such as talk.politics democrat and talk.politics.republican, received few messages during the time period being studied. Issue related groups were not considered in this group because of the researcher's interest in the election in general and not in any particular issue in the campaign.
In an attempt to maximize the impact of the election, messages posted originally to one of the two newsgroups (instead of just being in someone's crosspost list) before and after two specific political events were selected. In the republican newsgroup, messages from October 1, 1996 and every 8 days thereafter until the end of November were selected. This process selected messages from five days before the election and from three days after it. In the libertarian group, messages from the months before and after the nominating convention, at which the presidential candidate is chosen, were selected. I selected messages starting with June 1, 1996 until the end of July. This selected messages from five days before the election and 5 days afterwards.
To measure what types of conversational behavior messages contained and to see if the types were at all similar to those in unmediated communication, a scheme developed by Bales (1951) for face to face conversation analysis was used. The types of interaction in the scheme are described in table 12. There are 3 interaction types that are basically positive, 3 that are basically negative, 3 where you give help or information, and 3 where you ask for help or information.
Each of the selected messages were coded for several things. To capture the types of political activities included in the messages, one coding category was based on ideas developed from Rash (1997) which detailed types of online political activity. The activity types are described in Table 13. A "spam" category was added by the researcher. It is not a strictly political activity, but it is one that occurs frequently on newsgroups and can disturb conversations and interrupt planning activities.
The second part of the project involved a survey of users from 26 newsgroups listed in Table 14 (6 political, 8 technical, 5 hobbies, 2 support, and 5 miscellaneous). A survey with a variety of open-ended and closed questions was marked up as a web-based form. A message was posted to the selected newsgroups asking people to complete the web-based survey The message contained the survey's URL. Most readers only needed to double click the URL in the message to go directly to the survey; the rest had to cut the URL from the message and paste it into their browser. Directions for using the survey were included on the survey itself.
Newsgroups for the survey were chosen because they met several requirements. They had to be archived by the Deja.com search engine so that the researcher could read through past discussions. Groups were chosen from the major newsgroup hierarchies - alt, comp, soc, rec, and talk. Within the hierarchies, groups were selected to represent purely social discussions such as political and hobby oriented discussions, and skill or job based discussions. For the nonpolitical newsgroups, discrete groups with a high level of intra-group communication with limited crossposting were sought. The chosen groups had a large number of posts on an average day from a large number of different individuals. Some groups were chosen because they had primarily women posters in order to reach that demographic group.
It is not possible to do a random sample of usenet users. There is no central registry from which to draw. Many people read, but never post, so there is no record in the message archive of their presence and no way to estimate their numbers. Because the whole population is not known and can not be recruited for the survey, this project is based on a nonprobability sample, which is considered appropriate for these hard to reach groups (Yoffie, 1998; Zhao, 1997). However, a type of purposive sampling was possible, and steps were taken in the group selection process to recruit from a wide variety of interests and demographic characteristics in order to represent as much as possible the heterogeneity of the user base and to increase the external validity of the results.
Another problem with surveying usenet readers and posters is that the announcement of the survey is considered an unwelcome intrusion into the newsgroup's discussion. Follow-up posts reminding people about the survey generate more vocal complaints. The FAQ's of some newsgroups specifically forbid posting surveys regardless of whether they are research or marketing oriented. There are many commercials posts placed indiscriminately and on inappropriate groups (ads for sex-related products and services posted on discussions on family vacation destinations for instance). Many groups have begun to react vigorously to any off-topic post including sending personal mail warning the poster to stop, warning other people not to respond to the survey to discourage other survey posters, and threatening to contact the ISP or school technology people to complain.
Results
Tables 1 through 4 present the results of the content analysis of two Usenet newsgroups - alt.politics.usa.republican and talk.politics.libertarian. Table 1 shows the frequency and types of political activity in the messages; Table 2 shows the frequency and types of interaction; and Table 3 shows the frequency and general topic categories. Table 4 compares the amount of crossposting present in the groups.
Five hundred and twenty messages were analyzed from the alt.politics.usa.republican newsgroup. Although messages were posted all eight days, the number of messages posted per day dropped off after the election, the chosen political event for this newsgroup, with 74% (n=387) posted before the election and 26% (n=133) afterwards. There were 115 new threads started in the sampled messages. Two hundred people posted just once in the days sampled; they may have posted on other days. Thirty six people posted twice and 11 people posted three times. The most prolific person posted 32 messages.
The talk.politics.libertarian newsgroup had fewer messages posted to it than did the alt.politics.usa.republican group. There were 145 messages posted during the sampling time period. Fifty one percent of the messages (N=74) were posted before the convention, the political event chosen for this newsgroup, and 49% (N=71) afterwards. 75 people (52%) posted only once on the days sampled. This is a larger percentage than on the alt.politics.usa.republican group (38%). The most prolific person posted 16 times which is 11% of the total messages. Many of the 61 new threads (42%) seemed designed as pronouncements rather than as conversation starters. Only 5 of the messages dealt with the convention at all, and one of those was an antagonistic message posted by someone who seemed bent on disrupting conversation as much as possible.
RQ 1: What types of interactions do the messages posted to political newsgroups contain?
Table 2 describes the types of interactions present in posts to the two usenet groups, alt.politics.usa.republican and talk.politics.libertarian. Table 12 contains the description of the interaction categories. In both newsgroups, the most frequent types of interaction were giving opinions, giving orientation, and showing antagonism. These three categories accounted for more than 60% of the posts before the political event and more than 70% afterwards. Posts contained opinions and many were supported with facts and references to news stories. An example from a message posted to the republican newsgroup in October is referring to an earlier post discussing whether Margaret Sanger was racist brings in an outside source to bolster an argument: "This month's Atlantic Monthly has an article by Conor Cruise O'Brien, in which he argues that Jefferson should have no place in the pantheon of gods that he says constitutes the heart of the American civil religion..." The difference in the types of interactions between the two time periods is statistically significant.
Overall, there is more negative interaction such as disagreeing, showing tension, and showing antagonism than positive interaction such as agreeing, providing tension release, showing solidarity. Almost 20% of the republican newsgroup's messages and 24.5% of those in the Libertarian newsgroup contain primarily negative interactions. Many times the disagreements took on a personal tone. An example of such a message was posted to the republican newsgroup in after the election; the poster is referring to an earlier message about the correctness of banning assault weapons. "I own one of these banned rifles which I bought before the ban and I use it for target shooting. You obviously don't know what you're talking about....And you know what? The rifle does not possess a demon that makes me go on killing sprees. Maybe you socialistic anti-gun loons should get a clue." Another example was posted in October to that same group. "Van, you never WILL get it, will you? You are just as deceitful as the Clinton White House and the liberals in the press and Congress....You small-minded twit wouldn't even make a pimp on Newt Gingrich's ass."
Disagreement was not always so personal and rancorous. A message from the republican newsgroup, posted on 2 November, explained the voters presidential choice. " If the republicans get rid of the KKK, John Birchers and the Christian coalition they could probably win. That's why I'm voting for clinton. Cheers" Another message posted to that same newsgroup on 2 November is referring to a previous post saying the person would vote for Ross Perot. "Thereby giving Clinton a 'divide and conquer' your opponents vote, and helping to possibly re-elect Clinton. With all due respect, NO THANK YOU!"
11.6% of the republican messages and 14.9% of the libertarian newsgroup messages were positive. An example of a post with a more positive interaction was posted to the alt.politics.usa.republican newsgroup in October, before the election. The poster is responding to a previous message deriding various Clinton education policies. "Thank you for these posts. It's about time someone dealt with facts and reality. ..." Another example from October started out "Good post, and I think your points are well taken."
There are few instances of asking for opinions, clarifications, or suggestions in either group either before or after the political event chosen for that newsgroup. This seems to suggest that the tone of the newsgroup is not that of giving or expecting to receive help. A poster to the libertarian newsgroup before the convention asked where to get a pgp key (an encryption key). One post to the republican newsgroup asked for clarification of the instructions given to attendees at a local gun show. Another libertarian post before the convention asked for information about how libertarians view mercy killing. One post from after the election asked a previous poster to give more detail about the "identipill" referred to in that previous post. Sometimes the requests for information are not directed at any specific person. A message posted after the election asked simply who thought Clinton was a socialist and asked for replies. One example posted after the election quotes a previous post about Jack Kemp that claims his economic ideas have been thoroughly discredited. The entire original content consists of the question "Thoroughly discredited by whom?" which appears to be asking for clarification.
RQ 2: For what types of political participation are political newsgroups being used?
H1: The messages will report more possibilities to participate actively in politics than they will contain discussion about general political topics.
Table 1 compares the frequency and type of activity in the two newsgroups before and after the relevant political event (1996 presidential election and 1996 presidential nominating convention respectively). The primary activity in both groups is discussion. Almost 90% of the messages in both newsgroups were discussion. Providing news (perhaps by quoting news stories or providing links to news sites) is the 2nd most prevalent, which occurred in less than 10% of the messages in the republican newsgroup and in 17% of the messages posted after the convention to the libertarian group contained news. In both groups one person posted the bulk of the news articles and that was their primary contribution to the group.
There were some interesting, although rare, examples of other types of political activity besides discussion in the alt.politics.usa.republican newsgroup. Several of the political activity messages were posted on 2 November. One candidate issued an appeal for voters for his write-in congressional campaign. He told what office he was running for and in what district and state, and even included a link to his issue positions on the Vote-Smart web site. Another post advertised an organized political activity - a candidate's public appearance. The poster invited people to "come out and support the Republican Presidential candidate" A third example presents a several paragraph long rationale for not voting for either Dole or Clinton but rather for Perot, and encourages readers to do likewise. There were no examples of any political activity in the talk.politics.libertarian newsgroup.
On 11/10/96 a poster provided the url for people with a grievance against the IRS to complain to a new government committee; the message includes what appears to be a press release that directs the readers to a specific web site by saying "OK, guys get off your butts and go to..." Another poster suggested a counter productive political action on 11/26/96, after the election. The message said "Want to have some fun? And support your president at the same time? Mail a dime to the Presidential Legal Expense Trust, Dept 70, Washington, DC 20055. And request a receipt." Surprisingly, during the sampling period, there was only one example of a spam message which provided information on a non-political mailing list with "free offers and discounts" they could pay to join.
These results seem to indicate that both groups are using the newsgroup primarily for discussion instead of promoting other more active forms of political participation. The presence of messages containing political news may aid other readers in becoming more informed. Table 3 describes the general topic of the conversations. In the republican newsgroup more messages (43.7%, n=169) were partisan before the election than other topics. These messages mentioned one candidate or the other, but without encouraging others to support or work against them. This could be useful if the people posting were respected by other people reading and posting to the newsgroup. However, given the generally negative tone of the interactions, as discussed above, this is not the kind of discussion that Barber suggests will build strong democracy. It is not civil discourse (Barber 1999). After the election more than 50% of the messages were off-topic and non-political and the percentage of messages that were partisan drops to 27.1% Partisan messages were the smallest category for the libertarian newsgroup before the election. Few posters paid any attention to the convention or to the potentials nominees. There were more partisan posts after the election, perhaps because then there was a specific candidate upon which to focus discussion. In the libertarian group more messages were philosophical or completely off topic.
Overall, these two newsgroups do not present much evidence of their use for active political participation. While they have the potential for political discussion, the negative tone and personal attacks found in so many messages seems to prevent meaningful conversation from developing. This hypothesis is not supported.
H2: There will be more political activities other than discussion in the newsgroups before the chosen political event than afterwards.
Columns 2 and 3 of Table 1 compare the types of activities found in the coded messages from the alt.politics.usa.republican newsgroup before and after the 1996 presidential election. The difference between the two time periods is not statistically significant. (Chi = 6.7, p>0.24) There was fewer messages containing news after the election but the same number of posts trying to organize activities. While difference between the time periods was statistically significant (chi square 15.88, p>0.001) for the talk.politics.libertarian newsgroup in the last 2 columns of Table 1, the results were small. There were only 2 instances of organizing activities before the nominating convention and none after. There were 4 instances of instigating action before the convention and three afterwards - not much of a change. This hypothesis is not supported.
H3: There will be more partisan topics discussed before the chosen political event than afterwards.
Table 3 compares the type of topic posted to the newsgroups before and after the political events. For the republican newsgroup, there were fewer partisan messages after the election and the difference is significant (chi-square = 15.88, p=0.001) The libertarian newsgroup exhibited the opposite behavior. There were more partisan messages after the convention than before. (Chi square = 18.05, p>0.001) It could be that once a candidate was selected, talk focused on him instead of moving on to non-election topics as happened in the republican newsgroup. The results for this hypothesis are not clear.
Because there was so little political activity other than discussion on the two groups, not much light is shed on the question of whether real world events, such as elections and conventions, affect online behavior as predicted by Hypotheses 2 and 3. The results are mixed for these two hypotheses and no clear conclusions can be drawn.The question may be moot if in other newsgroups there is as little political activity other than discussion as was found in these two groups.
H4: There will be more political activities other than discussion in the Libertarian group than the Republican group.
Hypothesis 4 predicts that Libertarians, an example of a third party, will make use of the newsgroup to Internet to organize and promote political activities, activities other than discussion and it is clearly not supported. The data in the last two columns of table 1 seem to suggest that, at least in the case of this newsgroup, they are not making use of the Internet. 92% of the messages before the convention (N=68) and 79% (n=56) of the messages after the convention were just discussion. While this could help visitors become more informed and aware of issues, discussion does not help candidates organize or campaigns attract donors and volunteers. Two messages (3%) posted before the convention attempted to organize political events. This category includes activities such as asking for volunteers or trying to coordinate one group's activities with those of another group. Four messages (5%) tried to instigate activities, includes prompting others to act on action alerts or discussions of how to do specific acts.
One reason for this lack of online activities may be that the presidential candidate is chosen by the delegates to the nominating convention and not by the national party membership. With such a small group, potential candidates and their surrogates may be dealing directly with the delegates to garner support and have no need to stir up discussion and activity around the country. Other candidates could make use of the increased interest in campaigns to promote their own campaigns - but there was no evidence of that on this list. Another explanation for the lack of more active political participation is that party activists have other communication channels tailored for their use; the Libertarian party does have its own listserv and there are several mailing lists focused on the Libertarian Party. It might be that there just are very few such events related to the nominating convention to promote or organize. This question deserves further study since one of the assumptions of the more optimistic writers on the political uses of the internet is that it provides a level playing field for third parties to get their message to a nation wide audience.
RQ3: Do posters to political newsgroups behave differently than posters to non-political newsgroups?
It may be that the posters to these two newsgroups are somehow different from other posters and, if so, then the results are not of much help in considering the use of newsgroups to facilitate political participation. Notice of a survey was posted to a variety of newsgroups, political and nonpolitical. Table 17 contains a list of the groups on which the announcement was posted. Two hundred and twenty one responses were received. It is not possible to know what percentage of the posters to those newsgroups this represents because there is no central registry of usenet users, but it is probably a low percentage. As discussed above, a survey is considered an intrusion by some usenet newsgroups akin to commercial spam, and follow-up posts about the survey generated angry e-mail messages. There was little incentive for people to contribute to the online research survey - no payment, no extra credit, no recognition, only curiosity perhaps. The results from the survey are summarized in tables 5-11 below.
The two groups have much in common. Table 5 summarizes the responses from political and non-political groups. In both types of groups the majority of posters were male (See Table 6); this difference was very distinct in the political groups where 94% of the respondents were male. The inclusion of the vacation ocean cruising and soap opera newsgroups increased the number of posts from women in the nonpolitical groups. Inclusion of a newsgroup for a primarily women's issue, such as talk.abortion, did not increase the number of posting from women among the political posters. More respondents from the political newsgroup posted every day than did respondents from the non-political groups. The non-political group respondents were more likely to read every day though. These results are summarized in Tables 7 and 8.
They were asked to describe several types of online behavior in which they might have engaged. The respondents from the political groups were more likely to crosspost their messages to other groups. (See Table 10.) The content analysis had indicated a large amount of crossposting - approximately 51% of the republican newsgroup messages and 41% of the libertarian newsgroup messages were crossposted, sometimes to more than one group (see Table 4). They were also more likely to engage in other behavior that is usually considered inappropriate - flaming and criticizing other users. Almost 61% reported doing one or both of those behaviors; these results are summarized in table 12. This would seem to support the findings of rancorous interactions coded in Table 2. Posters to the nonpolitical groups were more likely to engage in one or more behaviors that would further conversation, such as posting news, helping a new user, posting jokes, and bringing in information from other sources such as web sites or other newsgroups. See Table 10 for these results.
Discussion
This study was designed to explore the notion that perhaps politically oriented usenet newsgroup could be a tool to increase or enhance political participation. The tone and type of interaction in selected messages were studied as were any specific political acts mentioned or encouraged. To find out more about posters to political newsgroups and how they might differ from posters to other non-political newsgroups, an online survey was conducted to which posters were invited, by means of a message in their newsgroup, to reply. Drawing on some of the more optimistic literature about the political uses of the internet, the hypotheses predicted that there would be evidence of use of the newsgroups to arrange and promote political activities and that those activities would be tied to real world political events such as an election and a nominating convention. The research questions came out of some of the more tentative and even pessimistic literature about political uses that indicated one should not assume that the Internet would bring about a flowering of individual political involvement.
The two newsgroups were full of discussion, more often disagreements and personal attacks than message providing information or encouragement. Real world political events are not the primary topic of conversation.There was little active participation - a request for people to turn out to see a presidential candidate, or the organization of a protest against the IRS. The potential for discussion as participation exists, but given the generally negative tone of the discussion, this does not seem likely.
These two newsgroups may be examples of how not to set up a forum to stimulate political participation if the goal is some form of participation other than discussion. They are full of pronouncements and personal attacks. They each had a small core group who generated the majority of the messages. In the case of the libertarian newsgroup, that small core group included people whose only purpose seemed to be the interruption of any moderate conversation that did develop. They are more likely to flame and criticize and less likely to offer help to new posters than are people who post to newsgroups with non-political foci. It may not be possible for the Internet to live up to the more positive predictions; it is not possible to break down barriers of distrust among internet users until political actors gets more involved online. Only one person identified themselves as a politician and that was the candidate asking people to support his write-in candidacy. They could do more interactive forms of communicating with their constituents such as electronic town halls, on-line issue forums which could occur in usenet newsgroups or web based forums. (Johnson & Kaye, 1998)
None of the hypotheses were clearly supported. There were few notices of political activities with which usenet readers could be involved. The selected political events had little effect in the online behavior of posters. There was no clear pattern in the distribution of partisan messages. The third party did not make use of the internet to efficiently and cost effectively increase awareness of their candidates. There was little evidence of the civil discourse sought by Barber. The behavior seen in these two newsgroups seems to support the more negative writing about the use of the internet in politics. The 2000 election may be different. Candidates are more visible online, taking part in chats sponsored by news organizations. They have hired more net savvy advisors. Replicating the project before and after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary would be useful to test this project's conclusions.
The Bales Interaction Categories seem to work well with online communication which suggests that posts are not significantly different from utterances during a face to face or telephone conversation. Messages were sufficiently simple in structure so as to make it possible to assign one and only category to any message. This may change in the future if the style of posting changes. The only type of message that was difficult to code using this set of categories were those that used humor in a negative way such as to make fun of a poster. These messages were definitely expressing disagreement with the previous poster, but using humor perhaps to defuse the situation.
Further light may be shed on the participatory possibilities of newsgroups by focusing on issue based groups rather than those that seem partisan. There may be more grass roots political activities being organized and promoted there than in the partisan groups. Groups focused on issues around which candidates have taken opposing stands would be good subjects.
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Table 1: Activity Type Before and After Selected Political Event
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Table 14: Survey Announcement Posted to Following Groups
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Presidential Election - alt.politics.usa.republican, Nominating Convention - talk.politics.libertarian
Chi-Square (Republican) = 6.7, df = 5, p>0.24Republican Newsgroup Libertarian Newsgroup Activity Type Before Election After Election Before Election After Election Organize Activities 0.5% (2) 1.5% (2) 2.7% (2) 0 Fundraising 0.3% (1) 0 0 0 Discussion 89.1% (345) 94.7% (126) 91.9% (68) 78.9% (56) News 7.2% (28) 2.3% (3) 0 16.9% (12) Advertising 0 0 0 0 Action Instigation 1.6% (6) 0.8% (1) 5.4% (4) 4.2% (3) Communication 0 0 0 0 Spam 1.3% (5) 0.8% (1) 0 0
Chi-Square (Libertarian) = 15.25, df = 3, p>0.002
Table 2: Interaction Types Before and After Selected Political Event
Presidential Election - alt.politics.usa.republican, Nominating Convention - talk.politics.libertarian
Table 3: Topic Type Before and After Selected Political EventDate/Interaction Before Election
10/1,9,17,25,11/2After Election
11/10,18,26Before Convention
6/1,9,17,25After Convention
7/3-5,11,19,27Shows Solidarity 4.4% (17) 0.8% (1) 2.7% (2) 0 Shows Tension Release 2.8% (11) 5.3% (7) 4.1% (3) 5.6% (4) Agrees 4.4% (17) 0.8% (1) 8.1% (6) 1.4% (1) Gives Suggestion 8.0% (31) 1.5% (2) 9.5% (7) 4.2% (3) Gives Opinion 37.7% (146) 39.1% (52) 25.7% (19) 40.8% (29) Gives Orientation 13.7% (53) 10.5% (14) 21.6% (16) 29.6% (21) Asks for Orientation 4.4% (17) 6.0% (8) 5.4% (4) 1.4% (1) Asks for Opinion 4.9% (19) 1.5% (2) 0 2.8% (2) Asks for Suggestion 0 0 1.4% (1) 0 Disagrees 9.0% (35) 12.8% (17) 4.2% (3) 0 Shows Tension 0.3% (1) 0 5.4% (4) 0 Shows Antagonism 10.3% (40) 21.8% (33) 14.9% (11) 11.3% (8)
Presidential Election - alt.politics.usa.republican, Nominating Convention - talk.politics.libertarian
Chi-Square(Republican) = 15.88, df = 3, p>0.001Topic Category Before Election After Election Before Convention After Convention Political 20.7% (80) 21.8% (29) 23% (17) 21.1% (15) Partisan 43.7% (169) 27.1% (36) 10.8% (8) 26.8% (19) Philosophical 2.3% (9) 0.8% (1) 44.6% (33) 15.5% (11) Other 33.3% (129) 50.5% (67) 21.7% (16) 36.6% (26)
Chi-Square (Libertarian) = 18.05, df = 4, p>0.001
Table 4: Actual Crossposting Behavior
Crossposted Republican Newsgroup Libertarian Newsgroup No 49.5% (236) 58.6% (85) Yes 50.5% (241) 41.4% (60)
Table 5: Surveys Returned by Type of Newsgroups (N=221)
Type Frequency Political (republican, libertarian, drugs, abortion, militia) 38% (84) Non-political (soap operas, sea cruises, programming, self-help groups, sports) 62% (137)
Table 6: Surveys Returned by Gender (N=219)
Chi-Square = 33.74, df=1, p> 0.0001Gender Political Groups Non-Political Groups Female 6% (5) 42.6% (58) Male 94% (78) 57.4% (78)
Table 7: Frequency of Posting Usenet Posts by Type of Group (N=220)
F (1,218) = 2.65, p>0.10Frequency Political Groups Non-Political Newsgroups Don't Know 32.5% (27) 17.5% (24) 1-3 Times/week 26.5% (22) 53.3% (73) 4-6 Times/week 19.3% (16) 17.5% (24) Everyday 21.7% (18) 11.7% (16)
Table 8: Frequency of Reading Usenet Messages by Type of Group (N=220)
F (1,217) = 70.55, p>0.0001Frequency Political Newsgroups Non-Political Newsgroups Never/Don't Know 19.5% (16) 0 1-3 times/week 51.2% (42) 10.9% (15) 4-6 times/week 9.8% (8) 43.8% (60) Everyday 19.5% (16) 45.3% (62)
Table 9: Reported Frequency of Unacceptable Online Behavior (N=218)
F (1,216) = 0.33, p>0.57Frequency Political Newsgroups Non-Political Newsgroups 0 39.3% (33) 47.8% (64) 1 46.4% (39) 23.1% (31) 2 14.3% (12) 29.1% (39)
Table 10: Reported Frequency of Acceptable Online Behavior (N=217)
F (1,215) = 0.62, p>0.43Frequency Political Newsgroups Non-Political Newsgroups 0 15.9% (13) 8.1% (11) 1 19.5% (16) 20.7% (28) 2 28% (23) 36.3% (49) 3 22% (18) 19.3% (26) 4 14.6% (12) 15.6% (21)
Table 11: Does Respondent Crosspost Messages to other Newsgroups (N=216)
Crossposts? Political Groups Non-Political Groups No 37.3% (31) 62.4% (83) Yes 62.7% (52) 37.6% (50)
CATEGORY NAME CATEGORY DESCRIPTION Shows Solidarity Raises other's status, gives help, reward Shows Tension Release Jokes, laughs, shows satisfaction Agrees Passive acceptance, understands, concurs, complies Gives Suggestion Direction, implying autonomy for others Gives Opinion Evaluation, analysis, expresses feeling, wish Gives Orientation Information, repeats, clarifies, confirms Asks for Orientation Information, repetition, confirmation Asks for Opinion Evaluation, analysis, expression of feeling Asks for Suggestion Direction, implying autonomy for others Disagrees Passive rejection, formality, withholds help Shows tension Asks for help, withdraws out of field Shows Antagonism Deflates other's status, defends or asserts self
Table 13: Types of Political Activities that Could be Done Online (from Rash, Wayne Jr., Politics on the Net, 1997)
Activity Name Description OrganizeActivities Ask for volunteers,ask for topics to be discussed, discuss upcoming activities, coordinate with other group's activities, try to attract new participants from groups with related interests and goals FundRaising Ask for money, donations, give address where to send donations, tell what donations will be used for Discussion General political discussion News Action alerts, breaking news stories, post press releases or pointers to news stories, plant false stories, spin events, provide media with details and story ideas Advertising Post dates and times of meetings and activities, calls for participation in upcoming conferences, talk about media appearances of candidates ActionInstigation Prompt others to act on action alerts, discuss how to do specific actions, encourage others to post results of actions Communicate With politicians who might be lurking on the newsgroup, to convey opinion or to urge their action Spam Commercial messages, off the topic of the newsgroup
Political Groups Non-Political Groups Talk.politics.libertarian IU.general Alt.politics.republican Rec.arts.tv.soaps.cbs Talk.politics.drugs Rec.travel.cruises Talk.abortion Talk.bizarre Misc.activism.militia Alt.conspiracies Alt.politics.homosexuality Alt.alien visitors Soc.singles Iu.macintosh Alt.usenet.surveys Comp.infosystems.www.authoring.site
design Comp.lang.javascript Sci.environment Rec.sport.golf Comp.lang.java.help Rec.sport.baseball Alt.supprt.divorce Comp.sys.mac.advocacy Comp.sys.mac.misc Comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Alt.support.single-parents