ASU Research E-Magazine: Plugging in Electronic Democracy

Making communication easier and faster has long been the focus of young inventors. Johannes Gutenberg created moveable metal type in the 1440s. Guglielmo Marconi developed the wireless telegraph in 1897. Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone in the early 1900s.

In 1972, Ray Tomlinson invented an electronic-mail program that could send messages across a distributed network of connected computers.

The Internet was born. By 1988, there were more than 60,000 users. The White House went on-line in 1993.

In 1997, on any given day, the Internet connects more than 50 million users living and working in more than 50 countries. Those numbers grow by the hour.

Steven Corman actively supports research projects that further people’s communication with one another. Corman directs the Public Communication Technology Project based at Arizona State University. The project harnesses the power of the Internet to open lines of communication between politicians and the people they represent.

Corman encouraged members of Arizona’s federal delegation, state agencies, and the Arizona Legislature to put public information on the World Wide Web.

“We gave them all technical support and answered questions, helped put their pages together, and provided a bit of training,” says the ASU associate professor of communication.

Today, the Arizona Legislature routinely gets up-to-date information out to constituents via the Web. Corman says that the web page is updated every 15 minutes when the Legislature is in session. When an event takes place on the floor, it is entered into the system and uploaded to provide the voting public almost immediate access.

Corman began the Arizona Congressional Delegation’s web site as part of the larger project. The work grew from a pilot study he conducted with former U.S. Rep. Sam Coppersmith, D-Ariz. Today, all six Arizona congressmen and both senators are on-line.

“Shortly after Coppersmith was defeated in 1994, we approached other members of the delegation and showed them some of the usage statistics,” Corman recalls. “We said, ‘Hey, hey look, a lot of people are interested in this—we’d like to get the whole delegation on-line.’”

Typical information found at each Web site includes a photo, biographical sketches, phone numbers, and e-mail as well as and snail mail addresses for offices in both Washington, D.C., and Arizona. In some cases, position papers, speech transcripts, and meeting schedules are also available.

Results of a survey conducted in 1996 indicate that the Internet’s user population is getting older and more diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity. No longer is it the domain of the 40-something, white male businessman.

Corman says that survey findings also indicate that more and more of those browsing the Web are less and less experienced with computers and the Internet. “You could say there are a lot more of less predictable users coming on-line,” he says.

Corman wants to expand his interest from Internet development to something he calls the “ask system.” This technology allows non-technical people to visit a web page, type a natural language description of the information they seek, submit it to the system, and get a more defined search list than what is presently available on the Internet.

“We’re talking about a less experienced user population that may not understand all the ins and outs of using key-word search engines,” Corman explains. “Those searches tend to be pretty non-specific.”

The communication professor wants to make it easier for non-experienced computer users to find the information, people, or agencies they need. He thinks the natural language-based “ask system” is the Internet’s next development phase.

Researchers are being forced to develop new concepts of human communication, Corman says. Specifically, researchers need to address the fact that people are interacting more and more with machines and less and less with people.

The concept of “message longevity” within the Internet environment fascinates Corman. “Computer technology traps messages in a way that is totally unique to everyday communication. You say something on electronic mail and send it out—the message is stored some place, even if the intended recipient deletes the transmission,” he explains. “This type of interaction has a permanence about it that really does strange things to the communication process.”

At the touch of a button, any individual’s sphere of influence can increase as access to other Web sites increase.

“This technology makes the government a lot more accessible to people,” Corman says. “Constituents think it makes the people in Washington, D.C., a lot more observable.”

Bringing people closer together is one benefit of the Internet, but such “proximity” also tends to extend an individual’s exposure. Corman thinks that politicians are beginning to feel that exposure a bit more.—Rebecca L. Jahn