AIR Friends: I am a big fan of describing the role of the internet in political life as a story of democracy and culture. For a candidate, the bottom line may be winning. For candidates, the bottom line may be winning, but I would disagree with JSG if she means that the 'bottom line' for those of us studying political culture should be candidate victories. Stories about politics online always involve some exciting new innovation and some disheartening stories of ugly political tricks. So both McCain and Bradley campaigns were innovative in that they used the Internet to organize decent campaigns in states where they had no paid full-time staff. They raised big bucks online, but only after media blitz on the possibilities of an upset and many of those "pledges" were taken over the phone and processed through webforms by volunteers sitting at campaign HQ. I don't think its going out on a limb to say there are a number of legislative campaigns, both elite lobbyist and grassroots campaigns, that have won _because_ of the internet. If this is out on a limb I'd hope it can be part of JSG's tree. It is really important to move beyond win/loss measures of the internet's role in political culture. Looking for internet effects the traditional polisci way means treating a bunch of phenomena additively, such that campaign communications strategy is one of a dozen factors (along with charisma, financing, platform) that add up to a explain a candidate's victory. Will the internet be making a difference when a wired campaign strategy (wired/not wired) provides 51% of the explained variation in electoral outcomes (candidate win/loose)? Even if you could create the database for such a model, I'd bet that the role of the internet in candidate campaigns is increasingly important yet increasingly ubiquitous, not increasingly pronounced and distinct. Being interested in political culture should mean looking for the contours of complex interaction between the variables. As a Ventura IT guy said, they "didn't win because of the internet, but wouldn't have won without it." With the traditional, additive analytical frame, this statement from the Ventura campaign would make their case unworthy of study. I think the internet made a difference in the 2000 Presidential election, where difference = deep part of political culture, not wired campaign = victory. I think secondary candidates like McCain, Bradley and Nader got further than expected; campaign communications were significantly more agile than in 1996; online posturing became a crucial part of impression management in the 48 hours after the Florida recount debacle. Activists dreamed up some really effective apps, including vote-swapping apps, candidate-citizen affinity matching apps, campaign finance tracking apps and more. They also generated a huge volume of political humor in the form of jokes, art, flash ads etc, which circulated well beyond activist networks. I agree Dean's campaign is innovative and seems to have really integrated internet-based apps into its campaign communications strategies. But will he or the richer campaigns be using the bots that join lists to promote and 'engage' list members? What kind of datamining will they do online? What are the internal power relations like between IT consultants and other campaign workers? BTW i'm building a collection of political flash apps at http://faculty.washington.edu/pnhoward/polart.html Do AIRers have any others I should add? There are a dozen there to play with, but i'd love more! Phil Philip N. Howard Assistant Professor Department of Communication University of Washington