The Internet and Citizen Communication With Government: Does the Medium Matter?

TLDR

The Internet provides a new channel for citizens to contact government, raising questions about how communication media affect civic engagement, with technology influencing both the likelihood of participation and the intensity of contact among active users. The study uses survey data to test whether the medium of communication influences citizens’ contact activity with government. Survey data were analyzed to examine how different communication media affect contacting behavior. The analysis shows that Internet-based contacts differ statistically from traditional contacts, but the differences are largely small, and the gender gap in contacting is larger online while political connectedness has a weaker association with online communication, illustrating both transitional and inherent effects of technology.

Abstract

The Internet offers a new means by which citizens may contact government to express their views or concerns, and it raises interesting empirical and theoretical questions about whether citizen contacts are affected by communication media. This article uses survey data to explore hypotheses about whether means of communication shape contacting activity. It compares Internet-based contacts with traditional contacts, showing statistically significant but for the most part substantively small differences. Effects of technology are of two kinds, those affecting only the likelihood of citizens being active in communicating with government and those affecting the frequency or intensity of communication among those who are active. The article discusses these findings in terms of transitional effects of technology, which arise from uneven distribution of the technology in society, and in terms of inherent effects, which attend to the technology itself. The most important inherent effects involve gender and political connectedness: The gender gap in contacting is larger on the Internet than in traditional forms of communication, and political connectedness has a weaker association with communication through the Internet.