New community networks: wired for change
New community networks: wired for change
The HomeNet field trial of residential Internet services
Communications of the ACM
The use and impact of the Blacksburg Electronic Village
Community networks (2nd ed.)
Digital Divide?: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide
Digital Divide?: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide
Communication Technology: The New Media in Society
Communication Technology: The New Media in Society
Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, and Interaction
Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, and Interaction
Weak ties in networked communities
Communities and technologies
Communications of the ACM - The Blogosphere
Participating in civil society: the case of networked communities
Interacting with Computers
dg.o '08 Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on Digital government research
OZCHI '09 Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7
Engaging new digital locals with interactive urban screens to collaboratively improve the city
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Puget sound off: fostering youth civic engagement through citizen journalism
Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
People, content, location: sweet spotting urban screens for situated engagement
Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Computers in Human Behavior
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Web logs (i.e., blogs) provide enhanced opportunities to extend capabilities of traditional electronic mail and discussion lists, especially in the hands of opinion leaders; such tools offer greater social interaction and informal discussion, and opportunities for conversational content production. Because blogging tools are simple, available, and free, users can easily communicate with others in their social networks, their geographic communities and the interested public. Blogs represent self-organizing social systems that can help many persons to: 1) interact collaboratively, 2) learn from each other by exchanging ideas and information, and 3) solve collective problems. For opinion leaders -- that small percentage of the population that is socially and politically active -- blogs represent another channel to disseminate ideas and garner feedback from members of their social network. The present research offers findings from a random household survey of citizens of Blacksburg and Montgomery County, Virginia about citizens' interests and attitudes towards local government, discussion of political issues, and their Internet use. We find that opinion leaders who engage in some form of blogging (read or write) are more likely to be male, extroverted and educated than bloggers who are not politically active. They score higher than other bloggers on measures of offline and online political interests and activities, community collective efficacy, and the size and heterogeneity of their political discussion networks. As such, their use of blogs may serve as a growing new communication channel to exercise their informal influence.