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Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement |
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overview
To understand how citizens are communicating with their Members of
Congress and what motivates them to do so, CMF partnered with Zogby International to
conduct a nationwide survey of citizens to address their methods,
reasons, and expectations with regard to their communications with
Capitol Hill.
The resulting report, Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement, discusses the results of this research with over 10,000 citizens. It is the companion to the 2005 CMF report detailing congressional
staff views of the increasing volumes of constituent mail.
Key
findings from the report include:
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Almost half of adult Americans
contacted Congress in the last five years to support, oppose or learn more
about issues of interest to them.
- The majority of people surveyed do not believe Congress is interested in what they have to say, but they want Members' to keep them informed of their views and activities and
of the policy issues being debated in Washington.
- Those who had contacted Congress tended to be more politically
active in other ways than those who had not.
- The Internet has become the primary source for learning about and
communicating with Congress.
- A majority of people who
contacted Congress had been asked to do so by a third party - primarily
through interest groups - and they place a high value on the role of
advocacy campaigns in our democracy.
CwC: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement
Read the full report:  CWC_CitizenEngagement (2.6Mb)
42 pages.
Copyright 2008, Congressional Management Foundation
ISBN: 1-930473-95-8
About the Communicating with Congress Project
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Project Overview - In 2001, CMF began work on this project to improve communications between citizens and Members of Congress.
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