Wan-Ying Lin and William H. Dutton, "The 'Net' Effect in Politics: The 'Stop the Overlay' Campaign in Los Angeles," Party Politics, 9 (January 2003), 124-136.

First Paragraph:
Since the late 1990s, the Internet has become one of the most prominent new information and communication technologies (ICTs) tied to grassroots political campaigns and social movements around the world. Highly visible illustrations of the reliance some organizers placed on ICTs in managing political activities are the key role played by the Internet in coordinating the protests by about 40,000 demonstrators from across the globe at the 1999 World Trade Organization's summit in Seattle, Washington and from more than 100,000 activists in Genoa, Italy in July 2001 at a meeting of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized countries.

Figures and Tables:
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Last Paragraph:
The Web reconfigured the geography and time horizons of access, as well as the networks of communication in ways that changed the dynamics of the policy process. It did not democratize political influence and enable a purely grassroots movement to arise. To the contrary, it was led and organized by a small group of well-educated, well-financed and technically skilled individuals appealing to an affluent middle-class constituency. This case study reinforces aspects of the 'iron law of oligarchy', with respect to Michels' (1959: 11) claim that 'there are oligarchical tendencies in every kind of human organization which strives for the attainment of definite ends'. However, it enabled this small group to reconfigure access to information and people involved with this policy issue in a way that influenced public policy. [This is the first paragraph of the conclusion.]