October 28, 1997

By REBECCA FAIRLEY RANEY

Who Says You Want a Revolution?

ANTA BARBARA, Calif. — By all accounts, the search continues for the great Internet insurrection, the prophesied rise of computer-driven democracy where money is irrelevant and ideas are king. It's a better world, in the grand scheme, full of knowledge and participation for all. It's the kind of place where people vote.

But a University of California researcher has some news about the Net:

There is no revolution.

In the most comprehensive study to date on political behavior on the Internet, Bruce Bimber, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has found that the promise of political renaissance is not coming true.

Ultimately, he argues, the easy access to the political process made possible by technology is not likely to usurp the power structure, but it might open it to new faces.

"I don't think we're going to see a lot of populism," Bimber said. "We're not going to have a political system without an elite class. We're going to have an elite class that's more fluid."

In the past year, Bimber conducted a telephone poll and a Web-based survey to measure people's political participation on the Internet. The respondents to the Web survey, which was linked to 15 political and government sites, represented not the general population, but about 12,000 people who are deeply entrenched both in politics and the Internet.

If change is going to happen, he thought, it would happen first in this group.

Bimber looked to that group for two things: increasing individual contact with elected representatives via the Internet and online outreach from community-based political groups. He found neither.

First, he wanted to assess whether people were using e-mail for easy contact with elected representatives. They weren't.

“I think the new democracy is going to look like the old democracy. The people who are going to be most effective using the Net are the people who have been most effective with television, the same organizations that dominate direct mail.”
Bruce Bimber

But the level of contact depended on the branch of government, too; they were far more likely to e-mail the White House than any other level of government.

In findings from surveys conducted during the November 1996 election season, Bimber found that when people wanted to contact an official, even frequent Internet users preferred to use the telephone or U.S. mail instead of e-mail.

While 27 percent had contacted Congress by traditional means in the past year, only 22 percent had done so by e-mail. Even fewer -- 15 percent -- contacted state government by e-mail, as opposed to 25 percent who contacted state government by telephone or U.S. mail.

Still, people far preferred to contact the White House by e-mail. Twenty-one percent reported that they had sent e-mail to the president in the past year, but only 12 percent had communicated by traditional means in that time.

"Quite clearly," Bimber wrote in a paper on the findings, "the accessibility and publicity given electronic mail addresses is a key variable. . . . The White House was substantially ahead of Congress and many state governments in establishing a significant presence on the Internet, and so the greater use of its e-mail address may be simply a function of public awareness and the availability of electronic mail addresses."

Bimber also wanted to see if political groups were using the Internet's cheap distribution to get their messages out. For the most part, they weren't.

He was watching most closely to see if local community organizations, such as PTA's or service clubs, were contacting people by the Internet. The findings were disappointing -- only 1 percent of those who were highly politically involved received online contact from community groups.

Eight percent heard from an interest group such as the Sierra Club or the National Rifle Association via the Internet, 7 percent heard from a political party, and 5 percent were contacted by a candidate organization.

The conclusion: So far, the "cyberocracy" is falling flat. Bimber also brought up the distressing notion that politics on the Internet could turn out like politics on TV.

"I think the new democracy is going to look like the old democracy," he said. "The people who are going to be most effective using the Net are the people who have been most effective with television, the same organizations that dominate direct mail."

Still, he quickly acknowledges that with the Internet, no conclusions are final.

"Trying to forecast the Internet now is like trying to forecast television in the 1950's," Bimber said.

No one knew then what a powerful political force the new medium would become. But that was a medium in which no one could talk back.

In his continuing studies, Bimber will be watching for the talking to begin.

PERSUASION is published biweekly, on Tuesdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.

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Related Sites
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• Government and Politics on the Net Project

• University of California at Santa Barbara

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Rebecca Fairley Raney at rfr@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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