I think JSG should paint her room fire-engine red. If this is boring somebody has to tell us to go off list. JSG's post has me thinking of what other 'media effects' on political life that academics have tried to look for. Here maybe the three most plausible, bottom-line, large scale internet effects on American political culture: INTERNET CANDIDATE? I think this is JSG's favorite, a candidate who could not possibly have won without the internet. However it is hard to imagine a candidate ever admitting this for a recording. Perhaps we could survey 100 pundits by asking them true/false if candidate X only won because of their internet strategy. One might argue that with web-based campaigns many districts have more 3rd candidates than ever, internet candidates whose only organization is online. This is a new, important phenomena that would not be interesting to someone waiting for a mainstream candidate to win with their internet campaign. POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION? There are many studies about whether citizens are smarter or dumber than they were 30 years ago, when verba/king/nie first started asking political sophistication questions. I think consensus point is that we are only modestly more politically sophisticated than we were, more credit due to rising level of general education than any particular news media or inspiring political leader. Unfortunately, simple questions about voter sophistication like "Who is your mayor?" are only asked occasionally. Respondents often feel they are being tested by such questions, so professional polling houses are afraid that respondents will get discouraged and decline further questions; academics rarely have enough grant money to ask the same questions over time. But I imagine that a small battery of questions about which media people used, demographics, and voter sophistication could be run through statistical tests to see if there is a relationship between the kinds of media people use, their political sophistication, and change over time. Do any AIRers know of datasets with internet use and political sophistication questions asked over time? MOVING LEFT? There are many studies about how the American public is slightly more left leaning than average pollster samples, and slightly more left leaning than the group of voters who show up on election day. I think consensus point is that reducing the transaction costs of political participation makes the median political norm shift slightly left. For example, in states where Moter-Voter legislation made it necessary to register at the time of renewing a car license, there was a slight increase in Democratic registrations and marginal increase in Democratic voting. But voting is NOT the only way to express political preferences, and since the Internet is a great tool for bugging your representatives after you have elected them, maybe the mark of impact would be a rise in the number of people who consider themselves political engaged (regressed on media choices). The number of people who contact their rep between elections? A slight left lean in the median political norms of the electorate would be an incredibly important bottom line media effect - a shift in the tectonic plates of the political landscape. Much deeper structural impact than a single candidate winning 'because of the internet'. A couple of weeks Christian Sandvig made a bet about warchalking that added both added mystic to his research and allowed him to collect data. Maybe an important part of becoming a sub/discipline is having inane bets and rivalries. So I'll bet Jen 1$Canadian that I can show that Americans are more politically sophisticated after making the Internet one of their regular media tools OR that the Americans are slightly more left-leaning after making the Internet one of their regular media tools BEFORE she finds a national political leader for whom their campaign internet strategy was the sufficient condition for winning. In other words, I'll either find more people engaged in politics, their political sophistication higher, or their political norms more lefty because of the Internet before she can find a candidate who wins office because of the internet. This may take years, but I'll wager another 1$CAN that I collect from JSG before she makes Emeritus. Open to friendly amendments. Phil Philip N. Howard Assistant Professor Department of Communication University of Washington