ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 explores the use of third-party constituent management firms to manage constituent communication and official congressional websites. All congressional offices contract with these third-party vendors that offer services to flag, filter, record, track, and provide form responses to constituent communications. Surprisingly, variance in dollars spent on these firms does not account for variance in online accessibility measures or other measures of website quality. Moreover, we argue in this chapter that congressional offices are moving toward an efficiency-driven, marketing-based model of communication. This movement is noticeable in a variety of ways, including a focus on advertisements of member issue positions and recent activity, as well as a focus on increasing office eNewsletter subscriptions.
