Page 175 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Political Organizations
distributing information, and coordinating actions in pursuit of com-
mon goals.
The coalition employed two web sites, one for internal communica-
tion and coordination among member organizations and one for public
use. The internal site, along with electronic mail networks, permitted
members of the coalition to pool information and distribute it among
themselves. As individual groups obtained information about develop-
mentsontheHilloratthecommission,theycoulddisseminateittoothers
without their traditional meetings and strategy sessions. The public web
site provided a means for attracting citizens outside the memberships of
the coalition groups. The coalition made it easy for citizens to contact
public officials using a zip code look-up facility for identifying sena-
tors and representatives and their contact information. 117 Beginning on
May 6, 1998, the coalition began distributing calls for citizens to con-
tact Congress, the commission, and the firms. These messages went out
through the web site and also filtered through the member organizations
and from them outward to others with an interest in education or univer-
sal service. Citizens were directed to the coalition’s web site, where forms
were available for composing and sending original messages to public
officials. Organizers claim that the campaign moved from concept to
distribution of messages in forty-eight hours. 118
By the end of the May, the coalition claims to have generated 10,000
e-mail messages to Congress, and another 10,000 by the end of June,
during the most intense period of public attention to E-Rate. 119 It also
reports that a substantial number of these messages came from people
outside their own formal memberships, although this claim cannot be
verified. In principle, the coalition had effectively merged the member-
ships of several groups into one, and at least in principle if not in practice
had opened up the pool of recruitable participants who were outside
those organization membership rolls.
An official of the NEA reports that the total cost of generating those
messages was about $40,000. 120 At $2 per message sent to Congress, the
cost of this campaign was a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail,

117 118
http://congress.nw.dc.us/e-rate. Bennett and Fielding, The Net Effect.
119
Ibid.; also see the May 29, 1998, press release of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference, “10,000 E-Mails Swamp Gov-
ernment Officials, Telecommunications Companies Defending ‘E-Rate’ for Schools,”
http://www.nccbuscc.org/comm/archives/98-122.htm; and Rebecca Weiner, “It’s
Cheaper Than a Stamp,” National Journal’s Technology Daily, Aug. 4, 1999, http://
nationaljournal.com/technologydaily?.
120
Weiner, “It’s Cheaper Than a Stamp.”
158