Bowling On-Line: Internet Society and Potential Reorientation of Republican Democracy in America.

The low marginal cost of internet socializing offers a potentially huge cost-benefit advantage over participation in more traditional types of civic associations. If net communities offer similar existential benefits (e.g. social contact, validation, etc.) as do traditional associations, then those more traditional communities have a competitive disadvantage in maintaining their status as loci of social, and therefore political, discussion. Given limited time to spend on socializing, internet societies alter the subject matter, scope and quality of personal interactions; it may be expected similarly to alter the scope of what is considered to be legitimate political action. The growth of communities based not upon geography and other traditional conceptions of shared-interest but upon selected interests and self-ascribed identity changes any imputed “common good.” Such a shift can be seen as an outgrowth of Madison’s use of republicanism to limit the purview of democratic politics. My paper examines how such changes in the forms and mechanisms civil association as seen on the internet can be expected to alter the political plausibility structures of what people consider to be the proper purview of political action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]