The impact of the Internet on civic health remains unpredictable and controversial. Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and Public Life Project, writes:

Our work suggests that computer-mediated interactions are more likely to be adding to and supplementing voluntary association than replacing such connections. This shows up at several levels of our work:

At the personal level, we consistently hear from internet users that they believe their use of email and instant messaging is increasing their amount of contact with others and helping the quality of their relationships. So, while there is undoubtedly some “replacement effect” as people send and use email and IMs instead of making phone calls or attending gatherings, there is much more multi-modal interaction of the kind where people use emails to set up meetings or phone calls or they send emails to people that represent communications that would not otherwise have taken place except for the ease of using email. Further, we know that people use the internet to expand and maintain association with those larger social networks.

At the community level, the internet seems to have an additive and connecting effect. Online Americans use the Internet to join and participate in groups they had not previously encountered. That is particularly true for younger users. To employ McLuhan’s notion that communication technologies have particular “grammars,” the grammar of the Internet is to afford community creation and maintenance.

At the political level, there is some evidence in our work that internet use to get political news and information brings people to the voting booth. We have not nailed this down definitively because we have only been working on it through three election cycles. Clearly, the role of the Internet in politics is growing. We found that in 2004, 75 million American adults used the Internet to get political news and information, swap emails about the campaign, or use the Internet for direct engagement with the campaign through contributions, attendance at meetings and rallies, or petitioning.

We have also found that Internet users, especially the heaviest ones, are more aware of all kinds of political information, including arguments contrary to their own beliefs, than lighter internet users or non-users. Thus, so far, the widespread worry about Internet use contributing to political balkanization is not evident in our studies.

Finally, there is a dimension of online life that is pretty easy to quantify and not easy to understand yet in the context of “voluntary association.” It’s the “content creation” side of online life. Some 57% of wired teenagers and 35% of online adults in America have posted some kind of creative material online their own writing, movies, audio material, artwork, media “mash-ups.” Their blogs are being read by others. Their articles and editing changes are on wikis. Their vlogs and mashups are on Youtube.com. People are swapping urls of the funniest, raunchiest, weirdest, most unforgettable, and most moving pieces of this content. Is that voluntary association? That’s debatable. Are “communities” being built around this stuff and conversations taking place around it? I’d say yes. And our work suggests that as people participate in these perhaps less-thanprofound “communities” they are more inclined to become involved via the Internet with more meaningful associations like community groups.