Page 141 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Political Organizations
of my research team and I interviewed officials of each campaign
in person. Where possible, we again used the interview/reinterview tech-
nique, speaking with officials during the heat of the campaign season and
then after the election was over. 28
For yet another perspective on interest groups as well as election
campaigns, we also interviewed officials at a set of public relations and
political advertising firms. My goal was to get behind the symbolic
AAPC adoption of Internet awards and understand how the efforts of
professional lobbyists to advocate on behalf of interest groups, corpo-
rations, and candidates might be sensitive to the changing information
environment. My criterion in selecting these lobbyists was simply to
include officials from firms in three categories: leading traditional firms
offering political communications consulting or public relations involv-
ing “grassroots advocacy” and “outside” lobbying; leading traditional
firms focused on “inside” lobbying and advocacy; and new political
consulting firms focused on Internet-based strategies. We compiled a
list of such firms and contacted the most prominent in each category.
Our final selection produced four traditional public relations firms, one
inside lobbying firm, and two new Internet specialists, for a total of seven
firms. The results of these interviews are not organized as a separate case
study, but are presented below in the narrative where appropriate and
are cited individually.
I chose not to include distinct cases involving mass media organiza-
tions, despite their importance to contemporary politics and the appar-
ently great implications of information technology for them. My chief
reasons for not including mass media as parallel cases are their theoreti-
cal differences from interest groups and campaign organizations, and the
scope of analysis needed to deal with them thoroughly. I exclude them
not because they are unimportant but rather because they are sufficiently
important to require their own study. However, interaction between new
media and old media proves to be an important subtopic in the cases
below.
I also excluded civic organizations and other nongovernmental or-
ganizations, also mainly for reasons of scope. Clearly, such groups
are important contributors to the pluralistic structure of American
politics, and without a doubt the possibility of postbureaucratic
organization applies to them. I interpret part of the debate over social

28
The exception is the Buchanan campaign, whose officials were not amenable to talking
with us the second time.
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