Over the last few years there has been a significant body of literature written concerning the role that technology plays in supplementing the existing framework of political participation in the United States. In addition, there has been a tremendous amount of literature by leading figures in the technology community. Many of these writings address the potential that the expanding avenues of web communication have to create and expand communities.
These discussions have largely remained separate from one another. The political writers consider modern technology as an addition to the system while the technologists conceive of it as a paradigm shift that holds the potential to drastically alter the ways in which humans organize and communicate with one another. What has not yet explicitly been done is an attempt to bridge these two discussions and bring greater context to each.
These bodies of literature provide the background for an investigation of the extent to which the greater accessibility of web communication technologies like Twitter, WordPress, and RSS create a radically different definition of political participation and participants in the politics of the United States.