ABSTRACT
With each passing election cycle the Internet is becoming a more decisive factor in political campaigns for candidates and Web users alike. Newspapers, initially slow to realize the World Wide Web’s potential (Lasica, 1996; Schultz, 1999), have now embraced the possibilities of the online medium. Effective cyberjournalism requires more than repurposing the offline product, however. The interconnected, continuously accessible character of cyberspace demands that media organizations engage users in interactive processes that keep them involved in the news while keeping pace with a news cycle that never ends. This chapter investigates the extent to which major metropolitan newspaper sites are facilitating civic participation in cyberspace as online media organizations transition into a “third generation” of Net news, characterized by an environment of increased immediacy, information richness, and user control (see Brown, 2000; Bucy, 2004a; Pavlik, 1997).
