rtynes@u.washington.edu:

1. I think that we might want to put aside past research on the effects of e-mails in a political process. Maybe it's better to just observe what is happening - what do e-mails to gov't officials do? maybe they don't get read? but is that the point? could they be jamming devices, designed to overload the system in conjunction with all the other forms of protest, such as marches?

So, presumably e-mail "effects" are an artefact of the formalized and not-formalized institutional practices put in place to enable outside access to e-mail, on the one hand (publicising an e-mail address, choosing the e-mail address, positioning it, and so forth) and to deal with inbound e-mail, on the other hand (who deals with it, their role, their number; the interfaces through which they deal with it; etc.). Which would be an interesting ethnographic/organizational study to read about, or for someone to undertake; maybe there are pointers. In the meantime, anyone want to chime in with anecdotes? In my experience in the corporate sector, and to a lesser extent the civil service, as soon as the organization grows beyond a small number of persons -- say, 15 or so -- an informal firewall tends to grow between frontlines folk who answer external inquiries, and specialized workers who deal with external folks only in specialized or directed circumstances. Where this happens, feedback mechanisms to link the parts will include: - no notification; - lists prepared routinely which define common topics and count the number of inquiries (complaints, questions) on each topic, then used to feed into various organizational practices; - informal water cooler type discussion. So in all cases, very heavy external inquiry will translate into some pressure, but the denial-of-service attacks of the type Robert identifies are diverted and localized to two groups -- others trying to get through with inquiries and complaints, and those who manage the inbound flow of e-mail to the frontline folks. On the other hand, I suspect that in politically-oriented organizations, the feedback mechanisms are more elaborate and have insides that make more of a difference. Anyone worked in that kind of environment? cheers Bram