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Rheingold: The New Interactivism
 CONTENTS: Introduction | The Internet and the Public Sphere | Civic Engagement, Civil Society, and Social Capital | Conclusion | Other Resources
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  Internet and the Public Sphere, pt. 2
The public sphere is where Kim Alexander operates when her organization, the California Voter's Foundation (http://www.calvoter.org/aboutcvf.html), uses e-mail to organize a campaign to require political candidates to put their financial disclosures on the Internet. The public sphere is what Steven Clift and colleagues at the Minnesota E-Democracy project (http://www.e-democracy.org) seek to extend when they bring candidates for state office online to publish position statements and field questions from citizens. A little investigation reveals that dozens, probably hundreds, of profit-making and nonprofit enterprises are experimenting with different tools for citizen empowerment. Among the most notable are:
 
 
  • CapAdvantage promotes communication with public officials, and other citizens. Their page, titled "Tools for Online Grassroots Advocacy and Mobilization," offers a comprehensive guide to Congressional publications, directories to identify state and national congressional representatives, spot news and issues tracking.
     

     

  • Webby Award-winner Freedom Forum Online is a good example of vibrant discussion of political issues via message boards, along with Internet radio and news on civil rights. The group describes itself as "a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."
     

     

  • For streaming media, look at WebActive, drawing content from larger, if not exactly "traditional," media sources, and Free Speech Internet Television, where anyone can put up a page. 
  • E-The People provides online petitions. "Welcome to America's Interactive Town Hall: Where Active Citizens Connect With Their Government and Each Other," says the site.


     If your car is swallowed up by a pothole the size of Poughkeepsie, E-The People can help you find the person you need to tell about it. Simply come to our site, click on "roads and transportation," type in your address and we'll forward your note to the right officials in your city. And if your public works commissioner doesn't have Internet access, we'll convert your concern to a fax! Are you an organizer? With E-The People, you can start a petition about the same pothole and contact 10 neighbors to sign it - all on one site.
     
     

  • And of course, VoxCap.com aggregates the information, tools and community of the public sphere for online civic engagement as well as for "building a community of engaged citizens, where social capital can be accumulated and brought to bear," according to Jeff Fisher, VoxCap.com's director of community development. 
More people need affordable access to these tools, but distributing good tools is just the beginning of the job. The tool is not the task. We need more knowledge of how others have used information and communication to achieve political objectives. More people need to work together with these tools on real issues, in the neighborhood, city, state, and nation. We must talk about which online experiments in civic engagement work best and allocate resources to replicate them.

 Civic Engagement, Civil Society, and Social Capital, Pt. 1
 

Contributed by voxcaphost to The Internet and the Public Sphere on November 2, 1999

 
 
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