Ch. 1: “Electronic Political Discussion”

This chapter offers an overview of various online communications, including electronic email lists, Usenet and blogs. Davis addresses the question of whether or not online discussions make any difference in political processes, institutions or societal behavior and ultimately decides that the prophesized utopia of direct democracy has not yet been achieved. The obstacles facing such restructuring include: inequality in the levels of accessibility and the fragmented nature of electronic political discussion. Even the more tempered notion of deliberative democracy faces hurdles - most notably human reliance on technological solutions.

This chapter is a helpful summary of current online discussion forums and briefly pulls apart the kind of Trippi-esque claims of revolution. I'm going to utilize the rest of this book in order to examine the broad claims of internet revolution which, in the case of much writing about the internet, seem devoid of factors like accessibility.

This article deals with the power of political blogs in local politics.  It focuses upon how candidates with little or no name recognition can gain some quick ground through the blogisphere.  By using this low cost resource to throw their name into the political arena, new candidates gain the ability to hit potential voters individually and with tons of information very quickly.

This website is the most visited political blog on the internet according to technorati.com.  It is run by a law professor at the University of Tennessee.  He seems to be a little on the conservative side, but this blog is a great example of the 1) the people who run blogs, 2) the amount of connection between blogs, and 3) how information is dealt out over the blogisphere. 

This NY times article focuses on the ethics behind blogging.  It examines the if there should be a code for bloggers and if they should be held up to the same standard as other print medias.  Since bloggers are considered amatuers by nature, they fall under the radar.  Shear attempts to consider whether bloggers should be held accountable for their actions because of the surge in the number of bloggers over the past couple of years.

This is the best resource I have found in the library concerning teh use of blogs in American democracy. It is a short read coming in at about 150 pages and gives tons of information about bloggers and their actual participation in politics. Like most political books about stratifying an electorate, it has tons of data. Great resource.

This recent essay on the importance of blogs in politics is a very informative and compelling work. Denzer's essay has a deep focus upon the origins and the effects of blogs upon the American political structure. It also has a tremendous amount of links that lead to great resources for anyone interested in the internet and American politics. An excellent resource.

This journal article is somewhat boring, but effective. It is written in a classical Political Science style and is more interested in designs, graphs, and diagrams than in the theories behind the data. It is a good primary resource, but speaks very broadly about the varying ways the internet influences politics and vice-versa. Robertson has some great primary resources and could lead to better articles or essays.

This website has tons of links to great resources. Both profit and non-profit websites with political blogs are readily available. The information on the website allows for a good starting place to look into the relationship between blogs and politics in American. By seperating the different types of blogs out there, it makes it much easier to scoure the internet for information about blogs and politics.

This book is an older version of Davis' later Politics Online. Unlike his later endeavor, Web is a theory based book. It feels as if this book gives Davis' theory for how the internet should work with politics and Politics Online is his research into trying to prove his hypotheses. Still a good earlier work about the potential power of the internet in teh electoral process and delibrative democracy.