INTERNET USE AND CIVIC

ENGAGEMENT
A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS

M. KENT JENNINGS
VICKI ZEITNER

Abstract Conclusions about the impact of the Internet on civic

engagement have been hampered by the unavailability of before and
after measures, a shortage of varied and multiple indicators of attitudes
and behaviors regarding engagement, and insufficient attention to gen-
erational differences. This article seeks to address these weaknesses by
employing a quasi-experimental design that draws on the 1982 and 1997
waves of a panel study that began with a national sample of the high
school class of 1965 and that also includes that generation’s lineage
successor. Comparisons between those using and not using the Internet
demonstrated that the digital divide, the original pre-Internet gap in civic
engagement, remained in place or increased slightly over time. Taking
into account pre-Internet levels of civic engagement and key socio-
economic characteristics indicates that Internet access has positive ef-
fects on several indicators of civic engagement. Comparisons of civic
engagement among Internet users according to how much they employ
the Internet for political purposes revealed modest bivariate associations
and very little independent effect at the multivariate level. The con-
nection between the Internet and civic engagement differed across the
two generations in some respects, explained in part by intergenerational
divergence in the intersection between the stage of individual political
development and incorporation of the Internet into a person’s media
repertory.

Trying to assess the political impact of the Internet on the American public
involves shooting at a moving target. After rapid expansion during the 1990s,
at least half of the American adult population had access to the Internet by
the end of the decade, a figure that can only increase with time (Pew Center

m. kent jennings is professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
and professor emeritus, University of Michigan. vicki zeitner is a political science graduate
student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This research draws on a project that has
been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging,
and the Academic Senate, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 67:311–334 䉷 2003 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research
All rights reserved. 0033-362X/2003/6703-0001$10.00
312 Jennings and Zeitner

for Research for the People and the Press 2000). As the Internet audience
enlarges and as the political usage of the Internet evolves, the effects of the
Internet are likely to change. All the more reason, then, for frequent monitoring
of the phenomena. In this article we seek to add more understanding of the
dynamics involved by analyzing long-term panel data having initial obser-
vations that precede the Internet, by examining a number of civic engagement
indicators, and by making cross-generational comparisons.
The Internet has spawned a profusion of technological innovations that
continue to change the conduct of public life (e.g., Bimber 1998, 2003; Davis
1999; Hill and Hughes 1997). In tandem, numerous speculations have emerged
about the impact of the Internet on civic engagement in the populace (e.g.,
Katz and Rice 2002, chaps. 6–9; Norris 1999, 2000). Some of this potential
impact involves how formal and informal organizations utilize the Internet to
distribute information and mobilize political interests.1 Very positive, idealistic
speculations see the Internet as strengthening civil society and democratic
politics more generally as it expands the opportunities for communication and
mobilization.
Our aim in this article is to explore the consequences of the Internet for
civic engagement on the part of ordinary citizens. In particular, we examine
the more skeptical, even negative visions of the connections between the
Internet and civic engagement. One such view holds that while the Internet
constitutes an important new medium, it will mainly serve to perpetuate and
reinforce existing inequalities in civic engagement. Those individuals with
greater preexisting resources and skills will simply adopt the Internet as an-
other tool. In fact, so the argument goes, the Internet could exaggerate existing
inequalities in civic engagement, due in part to the “digital divide” associated
with differential access to the Internet.
By contrast, a second skeptical version posits the Internet as a depoliticizing
medium. Just as television has been judged to be a culprit in the decline of
some forms of civic engagement (e.g., Putnam 2000, chap. 13), so too is the
Internet held suspect as potentially deflecting people from civic matters. To
the degree that the Internet becomes a social and occupational medium—via
extensive use of e-mail—or a shopping and entertainment medium, it will
serve to diminish involvement with civic matters. With diverse worlds at their
fingertips, why should ordinary citizens employ the Internet to enrich their
civic lives?
Finally, in a related vein, the Internet is also viewed warily due to its
potential for depersonalizing relationships and depressing the stock of social
capital, which—among other qualities—consists of trusting and working with
other people. Implicit here is the notion that electronic conversations, bulletin
boards, chat rooms, and virtual conferences are not only a poor match for

1. For three recent illustrations of the burgeoning literature on this topic, see Brainard and Siplon
(2000), Katz and Rice (2002), Margolis and Resnick (2000), and Shulman (2000).
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 313

traditional face-to-face interactions but that they may also constitute breeding
grounds for uncivil intercourse (e.g., Kraut et al. 1998; Putnam 2000, chap.
9).
We shall employ survey data in order to assess these three contentions about
the likely impact of the Internet on civic engagement in the mass public. The
survey research literature indicates that Internet users have higher levels of
civic engagement and conducive participatory traits than do nonusers. Much
of this relationship springs from the joint relationship of socioeconomic status
(SES) to both Internet use and most forms of civic engagement, so much so
that the initial bivariate relationships decline or disappear when SES is con-
trolled (e.g., Bimber 2001; Katz and Aspden 1997; Norris 1999).
The great majority of reports based on survey methodology suffer from
one or more of three shortcomings (e.g., Hill and Hughes 1998; Johnson and
Kaye 1998; Nie and Erbring 2000; Norris 1999; Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press 1999, 2000). One weakness lies in their focus on a
limited number of civic engagement indicators, which can lead to misplaced
generalizations. What is true for political attentiveness, for example, might
not be true for voluntary organization activities. What is true for the relatively
easy act of voting may not hold for the more demanding one of contacting
public officials. Limited indicators provide a questionable basis for
generalization.
A second weakness of most studies is the failure to investigate generational
differences (but see Shah, Kwak, and Holbert 2001). While surveys regularly
note that usage is increasing among younger cohorts, the possible differences
in the relationships between Internet use and civic engagement typically go
unremarked. Cohorts adding the Internet to their media diet work from a
foundation of more established patterns of civic engagement, such that Internet
use might simply display the same associations with civic engagement as do
other media modes. By contrast cohorts coming of age with the Internet already
part of their media repertory are still in the process of fashioning the nexus
between media use and civic engagement.
A third, fundamental shortcoming of virtually all sizable studies is the
absence of designs that have tracked at the individual level the presumed
impact of Internet usage. In the absence of over-time observations, most
studies of Internet use have relied upon cross-sectional data, using correlation
and regression techniques in an effort to sort out the impact of the Internet.2
Valuable as these studies are, they leave open the likely effects of selection
bias as well as making problematic any statements about the amount of in-
dividual-level change (if any) in civic engagement associated with Internet
use. Panel data offer decided advantages in these respects.
The University of Michigan’s long-term political socialization project pro-

2. Some large panel studies are now under way, but even these contain large portions of the
sample that are already Internet users. See, e.g., UCLA Center for Communication Policy (2000).
314 Jennings and Zeitner

vides a set of data having a large number of pre- and post-Internet measures
of civic engagement as well as containing control groups and distinctive
biological generations. The core of the project consists of a 1965 national
sample of high school seniors (average age of 18) who were subsequently
resurveyed in 1973, 1982, and 1997. Of the original 1,669 respondents, some
935 survived through the fourth wave, for an unadjusted retention rate of 56
percent.3 Approximately one-half of the 1997 respondents, now 50 years of
age, were interviewed face to face and one-half by telephone. No significant
mode effects were detected with respect to the analysis to be presented here.
Bracketing as they do a period preceding and following the widespread avail-
ability of the Internet, the 1982 and 1997 waves provide fortuitous and ap-
propriate bookends for assessing the fallout from this new medium of com-
munication. Whatever methodological liabilities carried by the cohort-centric
nature of this sample, lying at the heart of the early baby boomer generation,
are more than compensated for by the quasi-experimental design and multiple
indicators of civic engagement.
The 1997 data collection also included self-administered questionnaires
obtained from 778 of the 1,435 adolescent or older offspring of these panel
respondents. These offspring ranged in age from 15 to 38, with a mean of
23. Their availability will enable us to address the issue of whether genera-
tional differences exist in the relationships between Internet use and civic
engagement. We address this topic in the last portion of the article.
Our analysis divides the sample in two ways. One consists of simply al-
locating the respondents into users and nonusers of the Internet. Leaving aside
the issue of particular uses of the Internet, we examine the extent to which
having Internet access is associated with the stock of civic virtues. Although
using this crude cutting tool ignores the fact that how the Internet is employed
is differentially associated with civic engagement (e.g., Kaye and Johnson
2002; Norris and Jones 1998; and Shah, Kwak, and Holbert 2001), the “digital
divide” thereby exposed reflects a real-world difference in the kinds of people
who have access to the Internet and hence the potential impact of the Internet.
The second division explicitly recognizes particular uses of the Internet by
taking the subset of Internet users and allocating them according to whether
and how much they use the medium to follow public affairs and politics. This

3. The 1965 sample was drawn from 97 high schools selected with probability being proportionate
to size, and included nonpublic as well as public schools. Originally, 98 schools were selected
and 12 refused to cooperate. Thirteen matching schools were selected to replace the refusals, 11
of whom cooperated in the data collection. Thus, the final sample was drawn from 97 of 111
(87 percent) total schools selected. The student response rate of 99 percent, when coupled with
the school response rate of 87 percent, yields an overall unadjusted rate of 86 percent for the
sample. See Jennings and Niemi (1981, appendix) for more details. Relevant comparisons between
panel dropouts and stayers show relatively few significant sociopolitical differences. Panel stayers,
compared with dropouts, had slightly higher scores on some measures of political involvement
and expressed slightly more liberal attitudes. Panel status, however, never accounted for more
than 2 percent of the variance on any of these sociopolitical measures. For more details, see
Jennings and Niemi (1981) and Stoker and Jennings (1999).
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 315

Table 1. Internet Use for Following Public Affairs

% N

No access to Internet 50 466

Use Net but not for politics 37 339
Use Net for politics few times/year,
3–4 times/month 5 47
Use Net for politics 2–3 times/week 4 38
Use Net for politics almost daily 4 37
Total 100 927

approach parallels other efforts restricted to online users (e.g., Bimber 2001;
Hill and Hughes 1998, chap. 2; Norris 1999). In this sense the analysis is
modeled after politically focused media studies that seek to establish the
consequences, or at least corollaries, of the attention devoted to various media.
Of special interest to students of media consumption is the question of whether
political use of the Internet displaces or augments the use of traditional media
as a way of following politics.
We employ both cross-sectional and panel analysis. The cross-sectional
results demonstrate the overall differences between users and nonusers both
before and after the introduction of the Internet, thereby providing clues as
to whether the medium has served to widen or depress differences in civic
engagement in the aggregate. The panel analysis provides specifications re-
garding the impact of Internet use on civic engagement after taking into
account previous levels of civic engagement and other control variables.

Measures Employed
Internet use. The respondents were asked a series of winnowing questions
that began with whether they were currently using a computer either at home,
work, or school and continued through how frequently they used “the World
Wide Web, Usenet News, Listserves, chat rooms or other computer services
to follow public affairs and politics.” Table 1 shows the frequencies that
emerged based on their responses.
One-half of the respondents had access to the Net, a figure that approximates
that for the country as a whole as of the time of the survey. This division
provides the basis for our first set of analyses—that between users and non-
users.4 Of those with access, approximately one-quarter (one-eighth of the

4. Technically, having access to is not the same as using the Internet, but the difference is minor.
Illustratively, a 1998 random digit dial national survey revealed that approximately 90 percent
of 45–54-year-olds (an age range embracing the class of 1965) having access to the Internet—and
with levels of education comparable to those of the sample at hand—reported that they in fact
316 Jennings and Zeitner

total sample) professed to using the Net at least minimally to follow public
affairs and politics, a figure almost identical to that found in a 1996 survey
that included early baby boomers (Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press 1996). That fraction undoubtedly includes some casual surfers as
well as hard-core political junkies. However, it may also exclude people who
take a fairly narrow definition of politics and public affairs as well as those
who stumble, willy-nilly, onto political content as they traverse the Internet.
This division provides the basis for the second set of analyses—comparisons
between those having Internet access who do and those who do not use the
Internet for public affairs purposes, with the users being further divided by
frequency of usage.
As do others, we treat civic engagement rather broadly to include both
behaviors and attitudes with respect to political and quasi-political processes
and institutions (e.g., Johnson, Hays, and Hays 1998; Putnam 2000; and Verba,
Schlozman, and Brady 1995). We employ 14 specific measures, apportioned
into four clusters.5
Media attentiveness. Attention to other media constitutes one obvious place
to look for the consequences of Internet use. As a new arrival on the com-
munication scene, the Internet poses a threat to preexisting media. In this
respect its introduction might be likened to assessments following the intro-
duction of television or, from a much earlier time, the introduction of radio
as a competitor to newspapers. During each panel wave the respondents replied
to standard questions about the frequency with which they employed news-
papers, magazines, radio, and television “to follow public affairs, politics, and
the news.” For all but magazine reading (no, yes) the frequency categories
were “not at all, 3–4 times a month, 2–3 times a week, and almost daily.”
Political involvement. Several well-known indicators of a propensity to
participate were obtained at each time point. These included a declared interest
in public affairs, subjective self-assessments of internal and external political
efficacy, and factual political knowledge (see app. A).
Two other measures capture concrete political action, namely, involvement
in community affairs and conventional political activities. One contention
about the Internet is that it might especially diminish involvement in com-
munity affairs. With the broad scope of targets online and a potentially large
virtual community readily at hand, perhaps Internet users will move away
from community concerns. On the other hand, advocates of “NetWorking”
believe that computer technology will enrich community life by improving
communication networks, encouraging civic activity, and serving as a tool
used the Net. The proportion rises to around 95 percent among the offspring generation that is
analyzed in the last section of the present article (National Omnibus Internet Questions
1996–1999, 2003). Consequently, for purposes of variety in the prose we shall equate the terms
access and use. We shall also equate “following public affairs on the Internet” with “political
use of the Internet.”
5. Political use of the Internet is itself an indicator of civic engagement. Its uniqueness compared
with all of the others is that of recency, having occurred between 1982 and 1997.
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 317

for education (Schwartz 1998). Community activists have advanced this

agenda through the development of electronic bulletin boards and community
networks (Bryan, Tsagarousianou, and Tambini 1998; Docter and Dutton 1998;
Tsagarousianou 1998). To gauge whether Internet usage appears to affect
collective action at the local level, respondents indicated whether, since the
time of the previous survey, they had “worked with others to try to solve
some community problems.”
A second measure of concrete political behavior assesses overall levels of
conventional political activity by adding eight other activities to that of com-
munity involvement. This measure is a cumulative index ranging from 0 to
9 and based on how many of the following activities had been performed
over the past several years preceding the time of the respective surveys: voting
in the past two presidential elections, trying to persuade others how to vote,
displaying a campaign button or sticker, making political donations, doing
other kinds of campaign work, communicating an opinion to public officials,
writing a letter to the editor, taking part in a demonstration, and working with
others to solve a community problem.6
Volunteerism. A key argument in the national debate about whether social
capital and civic virtue are declining in the United States concerns participation
in volunteer groups and programs, sources of civic skills and norms of social
trust. Growing and widespread use of the Internet is alleged to threaten the
face-to-face interactions that characterize volunteering. We approached the
measurement of volunteering in two ways. In the first, respondents reacted
to a long list of organizations, indicating whether they belonged and, if so,
their level of activity. The list (see app. A) included organizational types
prominently cited as molders of civic competence and as active players in
community affairs. A cumulative index, ranging from 0 to 7, represents the
total number of organizational memberships reported.7
In contrast to this structured format, a second one relied on responses to a
combination of structured and open-ended questions. The lead-in question
read, “Apart from any work you do for pay, do you do any volunteer work?”
Respondents saying yes were then asked, “What kind of volunteer work do
you do?”8 A major advantage of this latter approach is that it requires the
respondents to specify concrete behaviors—in contrast to the more passive

6. Specific years are attached to presidential voting and the last four activities listed. As is the
case for most reports of political participation, respondents in this study tended to shorten the
time frame presented to them (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993, chap. 3). The great majority of
reported activities took place within the past 5 years, a period roughly coinciding with rapid
growth in the Internet. For present purposes this is a reassuring datum because we do not know
exactly when the respondents began to use the Internet.
7. The maximum number actually exceeded seven, but the number of cases over that total is
minuscule.
8. The volunteering question appeared before the organizational list battery and was separated
from it by several intervening questions.
318 Jennings and Zeitner

response of the first measure. Based on the total number of activities men-
tioned, we constructed a cumulative index running from 0 to 3.
Trust orientations. Social trust, or trust in others, is also cited as a vital
component of social capital. The presumed link to civic engagement rests in
the contention that individuals cannot work collectively for a common good
unless they trust each other. Concern has been expressed that the physical
isolation associated with Internet use as well as widespread instances of uncivil
Net behavior would drive down levels of social trust. The social trust measure
employed here is a cumulative index built on responses to the three standard
forced-choice items employed by National Election Studies (NES) and many
other survey organizations (see app. A). Political trust is not a traditional
indicator of civic engagement, but its possible connection to Internet use merits
attention. It has been speculated that the Internet, especially via chat rooms
and Usenet groups, provides an ideal forum for fostering and abetting political
cynicism. The political trust measure consists of a cumulative index based on
responses to five forced-choice statements used in the NES studies (see app.
A).

Civic Engagement Digital Divides Before and After

A signal virtue of the longitudinal data consists of being able to examine the
connections between the measures just described both before (1982) and after
(1997) the introduction of the Internet. Doing so means that we can determine
to what degree prior levels of civic engagement were associated with sub-
sequent Internet use. The aim is not to develop a predictive model of who
eventually came to utilize the Internet; to do so would require introducing a
host of predictor variables. Rather, the aim is to provide an aggregate view
of how Internet practitioners selected themselves into the user pool according
to prior civic engagement characteristics. Proceeding in this manner will dem-
onstrate the degree to which ultimate Internet users already differed from
nonusers with respect to civic engagement. By contrast, the standard practice
in cross-sectional research relies on simultaneous reporting of civic engage-
ment and Internet use or, in an even more limited fashion, employs socio-
demographic surrogates of civic engagement. Drawing on the “post” measures
of 1997 will then provide a critical comparison of the association between
Internet use and civic engagement in the sample before and after the intro-
duction of the Internet.
We turn first to the simple division between users and nonusers. Given the
known joint associations between correlates of civic engagement on the one
hand, and access to the Internet on the other, we expect that people who were
more previously engaged would also be those most likely to go online. We
use the product-moment correlation coefficient to assess that expectation.9 As
9. Other common measures of association yield very similar results.
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 319

Table 2. Lagged and Contemporaneous Correlates of Access to Internet

Relationship between Relationship between

1982 Measures and 1997 1997 Measures and 1997
Access to Internet Access to Internet

Media attentiveness:
Newspaper reading .16*** .19***
Magazine reading .26*** .21***
Television viewing ⫺.05 .07*
Radio listening .09** .21***
Political involvement:
Interest in public affairs .14*** .16***
Internal political efficacy .23*** .22***
External political efficacy .18*** .21***
Political knowledge .21*** .24***
Community problem
solving .14*** .17***
Political activity .23*** .24***
Volunteerism:
Organizational
memberships .10** .29***
Volunteer activities .11** .17***
Trust orientations:
Political trust .07* .07*
Social trust .03 .06
Note.—Entries are product-moment correlations. N’s range from 791 to 927.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

the left side of table 2 demonstrates, all of the lagged (1982) measures are
indeed positively related to subsequent Internet use, with the exception of
television viewing and social trust. Although the respondents who were pre-
viously more engaged latched on to the communication innovation more rap-
idly than did the less engaged, the magnitude of the relationships is modest
to moderate even though most are highly significant statistically. It should be
recalled that these findings are based on a cohort in which all members had
at least a high school degree. Selection effects would undoubtedly be stronger
if the remainder of the cohort were included in the database.
Turning to the post-Internet relationships, the second column of table 2
shows that access to the Internet is significantly related to all forms of 1997
media attentiveness (now including television watching), all measures of po-
litical involvement, volunteerism, and social trust. The strength of these as-
sociations tends to be slightly larger than those shown in the first column,
thereby reflecting in part the common finding in survey research for contem-
320 Jennings and Zeitner

poraneous measurements to be more highly related to each other than are

lagged measurements. Notwithstanding that tendency, the marked increases
in the correlations involving radio listening, organizational memberships, and
volunteer activities command attention. The latter two relationships demon-
strate the heightened affinity between Internet use and what are commonly
seen as key markers of social capital. On balance, these descriptive results
support those who argue that the Internet is associated with either reinforce-
ment or widening of the civic engagement gap between those with and without
access. They do not support the perspective that Internet use, per se, would
become associated with an aggregate decline in civic engagement.
Relatedly, and bearing on a controversial aspect of Internet use, consider
the results for the social trust measure. Dire warnings notwithstanding, Internet
users and nonusers differed scarcely at all in levels of social trust either before
or after the fact. What little association does exist between Internet use and
social trust is positive. Rather surprisingly, both the 1982 and 1997 political
trust scores are also positively, albeit weakly, related to Internet use. Based,
then, on this simple division of the sample, neither social nor political trust
is much associated with Internet use.
We now take up the second division of the sample, one restricted to that
half of the respondents who have access to the Internet. As described above,
these individuals were subsequently divided according to how often they
employ the Internet to follow public affairs and politics, ranging from not at
all to almost daily. Here we expect to find more modest relationships than in
the previous comparisons. Having removed those without access from the
sample means that we have also sharply reduced the variance on measures
typically associated with civic engagement. Illustratively, whereas 55 percent
of those with access had at least a college degree by 1982 and 40 percent
had 1996 family incomes of at least $100,000, the same was true of only 28
percent and 16 percent, respectively, of those without access.
As shown in the first column of table 3, the more often people followed
politics in 1982 via all the media, except for television, the more frequently
they subsequently used the Internet for the same purpose. Thus, at the ag-
gregate level, the more avid consumers of news in newspapers, radio, and
magazines more readily added a new supplier of such information. The only
other indicators of civic engagement significantly related to later political use
of the Internet were political knowledge and political activity.
The second column of table 3 tells quite a different story. Contemporaneous
measures yield little or no connection between frequency of Internet political
use and political use of the other media. The initial selection effects associated
with the use of other media diminished as political users (relative to nonusers)
of the Internet began to employ the traditional media somewhat less often.
In contrast, the contemporaneous measures also reveal several instances in
which the relationships equal or exceed those based on the lagged correlations.
People who more often employ the Internet politically are also more interested
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 321

Table 3. Lagged and Contemporaneous Correlates of Internet Use for Fol-

lowing Public Affairs

Relationship between 1982 Relationship between 1997

Measures and 1997 Internet Measures and 1997 Internet
Use to Follow Public Affairs Use to Follow Public Affairs

Media attentiveness:
Newspaper reading .13** .03
Magazine reading .12** .04
Television viewing ⫺.01 .06
Radio listening .16** .00
Political involvement:
Interest in public
affairs .09 .14**
Internal political
efficacy ⫺.01 .05
External political
efficacy ⫺.05 .03
Political knowledge .15** .16***
Community problem
solving .06 .14**
Political activity .11* .16**
Volunteerism:
Organizational
memberships .08 .00
Volunteer activities .02 .11*
Trust orientations:
Political trust ⫺.03 .09
Social trust ⫺.02 .04
Note.—Entries are product-moment correlations. N’s range from 379 to 456.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

in politics, more knowledgeable, and more likely to help solve community

problems, engage in a range of political activities, and perform volunteer
work. In terms of an “intradigital” divide, then, the political involvement gap
had widened between political and nonpolitical users of the Internet. Although
modest in magnitude, these associations suggest that following politics via
the Internet is not an instance of what is primarily a spectator activity replacing
more active forms of behavior or, at least, no more so than is true of non-
political users of the Internet.
Finally, neither social nor political trust is related to political use of the
322 Jennings and Zeitner

Internet in either the lagged or contemporaneous state, although the direction

of the relationship does change from negative to positive.10

A Multivariate Analysis of the Panel Data

These before and after portrayals add to our knowledge about how the Internet
fits into the larger picture of civic engagement. However, they also demonstrate
that selection effects exist with respect to Internet use as of the 1997 obser-
vations, especially so in the case of the dichotomy between those with and
without access. Accordingly, they do not tell us whether and how much
previous levels of engagement are affected by (or, more cautiously, related
to) subsequent Internet use. Taking into account such priors in the form of
“before Internet” observations as well as the role of several individual-level
characteristics is the task of this section.11
In order to assess the outcomes of differential Internet usage we regressed
the 1997 civic engagement measures on the matching 1982 measures, con-
trolling for Internet use and a number of other relevant variables. Included
in these controls were the big three of sex, education, and family income,
three social characteristics known to be strongly associated with some or all
of the engagement measures as well as with the quantity and quality of Internet
use itself (e.g., Norris 1999; Pew Internet and American Life Project 2000).12
In addition, five other controls reflecting life events between 1982 and 1997
were introduced in order to provide an even more stringent assessment of
possible Internet effects. These five measures consist of geographical, occu-
pational, and marital status stability; additional education; and the presence
of school age children for all or most of the panel period.13 All of these
variables were recoded into 0–1 dichotomies, with 1 representing the presence
of a characteristic hypothesized to have a positive impact on most forms of
civic engagement because they either denote greater social rootedness or up-
ward mobility. Another potential control variable, age, is essentially a constant.

10. Norris (1999) also found no contemporaneous connections between political use of the
Internet and either social or political trust.
11. Despite the availability of these before measures, the problem of endogeneity remains. Trying
to solve for selection effects beyond the availability of the prior measures is almost hopelessly
confounded by common determinants of Internet use and the civic engagement measures. Even
so, we are much better armed than studies based on cross-sectional designs.
12. Education is a three-category variable (high school degree, some college, college degree or
higher) based on attainments as of 1982, when the respondents were around 35 years of age.
Family income is a 12-category variable denoting total family income for 1996. Employment
status, as such, could not be used as a control inasmuch as all but a handful of the respondents
were employed most of the time throughout the panel period.
13. Length of residence distinguishes between those residing (1) and not residing in the same
community. Parental status refers to those who had (1) or did not have a child at home. Marital
stability means the absence of change of any sort (1) in marital status. Employment stability
includes not being fired, temporarily out of work, or obtaining a new job (1). Increases in education
refers to whether any further formal education had occurred (1).
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 323

While a limitation in some respects, age as a constant rules out one strong
possible confound connected with the results.14
Based on the common finding that past attitudes and behaviors are the best
predictors of present ones, we expected that the 1982 scores—even though
obtained 15 years earlier—would be the strongest predictors of the companion
1997 scores. A perusal of the tables containing the full set of the regression
results (see online tables B1–B6 in app. B, available in the electronic version
of Public Opinion Quarterly) strongly confirms that expectation. Because our
main focus lies in estimating the seeming effects of Internet use rather than
that of the other variables in the equations, and in the interests of brevity,
only the coefficients for the 1982 counterpart and Internet use will be presented
here in tables 4 and 5.
As the earlier analysis demonstrated, having access to the Internet accom-
panied significantly higher scores on virtually all indicators of civic engage-
ment at time2, well after the Internet’s diffusion. That continues to be true to
a restricted degree after taking into account the time1 scores along with the
eight additional control variables (table 4). Importantly, three of the strongest
relationships involve the use of other media for political news. These positive
signs do not, of course, refer to absolute increases in media consumption;
rather, compared with nonusers, Internet users had relatively higher scores,
net of the control variables.15 The important exception here is newspaper
reading, which is no longer positively related to Internet availability.
Internet access is now positively related to two indicators of political in-
volvement—interest in public affairs and external affairs—while falling just
shy of the .05 level for political knowledge (.052) and community problem
solving (.07). As for indicators of volunteerism, the strong relationship be-
tween Internet use and organizational involvement is especially compelling.
Ironically, one of the specific areas that students of social capital seem most
concerned about appears to be weathering, even prospering in a relative sense,
under the Internet onslaught. Again, neither social nor political trust is as-
sociated with Internet access.
On balance, the pessimistic view about the depressing effects of the Internet
on civic engagement has to be rejected. Of the 14 indicators used, only one

14. We have not included other indicators of civic engagement in estimating the equations for
a given indicator. Several of these measures are intimately connected with each other, thereby
raising critical issues of endogeneity and multicolinearity. Rather than employ indicators of civic
engagement to predict other indicators, absent firm rationales for directionality, the present anal-
ysis is driven by known antecedent conditions that could not have been influenced by either
Internet use or by other concurrent civic engagement variables. By controlling for the T1 score
we not only employ the strongest predictor of the T2 score but, importantly, we use a predictor
which already reflects the impact of related variables captured at T1. In addition to the T1 score
the equations include the powerful, antecedent variables of gender, education at T1, and income
at T2, as well as five concrete measures capturing personal events between T1 and T2 that clearly
predate the 1997 measures of civic engagement.
15. For the sample as a whole, there were small absolute declines in the use of television, radio,
and magazines, and no change for newspaper readership.
324 Jennings and Zeitner

Table 4. Relationship between Internet Access and 1997 Levels of Civic

Engagement, Controlling for 1982 Counterpart and Eight Social Charac-
teristics

1982 Measure Internet Access

b SE b SE

Media attentiveness:
Newspaper reading (0–4) .49*** .03 .08 .07
Magazine reading (0–4) .24*** .03 .18** .06
Television viewing (0–4) .22*** .04 .20** .07
Radio listening (0–4) .20*** .03 .31*** .09
Political involvement:
Interest in public affairs (0–3) .46*** .03 .10* .05
Internal political efficacy (0–2) .42*** .03 .06 .05
External political efficacy (0–2) .34*** .03 .12* .05
Political knowledge (0–7) .78*** .04 .18 .09
Community problem solving (0–1) .25*** .04 .07 .04
Political activity (0–9) .62*** .03 .24 .15
Volunteerism:
Organizational memberships (0–7) .36*** .05 .70*** .14
Volunteer activities (0–3) .33*** .04 .08 .07
Trust orientations:
Political trust (0–5) .28*** .03 .12 .10
Social trust (0–6) .42*** .03 ⫺.06 .15
Note.—N’s range from 630 to 736. Other control variables include gender, 1982 education,
and 1997 family income; and between-wave indicators of marital, employment, and residential
stability, further education, and presence of school-age child.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

has a (nonsignificant) negative association with Internet use, while six have
significant positive signs, with two others on the borderline. If anything, then,
gaining access to the Net between 1982 and 1997 was associated with a
positive contribution to several widely used indicators of civic engagement.
Nor do any significant negative effects appear when the multivariate analysis
is restricted to those individuals having access to the Internet (table 5). On
the other hand, there is also only one significant positive effect, that involving
volunteer activities, with community problem solving just missing the .05
level (.06). Given the centrality of volunteerism and community activism in
the whole debate about social capital, these are not trivial findings. Notice
also that more frequent political users are no more nor less trusting of others
and the government than are other users. This is perhaps the most convincing
evidence presented thus far against the proposition that the Internet either
breeds or reflects distrust.
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 325

Table 5. Relationship between Internet Use for Following Public Affairs

and 1997 Levels of Civic Engagement, Controlling for 1982 Counterpart and
Eight Social Characteristics

1982 Measure Internet Use

b SE b SE

Media attentiveness:
Newspaper reading (0–4) .45*** .05 ⫺.02 .05
Magazine reading (0–4) .29*** .05 ⫺.06 .05
Television viewing (0–4) .23*** .05 .03 .05
Radio listening (0–4) .23*** .05 ⫺.10 .07
Political involvement:
Interest in public affairs (0–3) .40*** .05 .05 .03
Internal political efficacy (0–2) .38*** .05 .04 .04
External political efficacy (0–2) .37*** .05 ⫺.06 .04
Political knowledge (0–7) .67*** .04 .04 .07
Community problem solving (0–1) .20*** .05 .05 .03
Political activity (0–9) .65*** .05 .17 .11
Volunteerism:
Organizational memberships (0–7) .36*** .07 ⫺.09 .11
Volunteer activities (0–3) .34*** .05 .16** .05
Trust orientations:
Political trust (0–5) .35*** .05 .03 .07
Social trust (0–6) .40*** .05 .06 .11
Note.—N’s range from 310 to 370. Other control variables include gender, 1982 education,
and 1997 family income; and between-wave indicators of marital, employment, and residential
stability, further education, and presence of school-age child.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

The more important point, however, rests in the basic lack of significant
associations between level of political usage of the Net and civic engagement,
save for the noted exceptions. It would be hard to argue that political use of
the Internet is supplanting, in a relative sense, either passive or more active
forms of engagement. At the same time, employing the Internet for political
purposes does not, at this stage, enhance levels of civic engagement after
taking into account prior levels of engagement and key social characteristics.
As shall be presently demonstrated, there are signs that this state of affairs
may be changing among post-Internet cohorts.

Generational Comparisons
Panel data from the class of 1965 obviously involve people having essentially
no age range and coming into the Internet era at a particular time in their
326 Jennings and Zeitner

own life cycle. As Internet use diffuses, the heterogeneity of the population
increases, especially in terms of socioeconomic status. Newer cohorts are also
entering the Internet world at a different life stage than older cohorts. Con-
sequently, the kinds of relationships reported on above may not hold among
younger users.
Thanks to the data collected from the offspring generation in the 1997
study, we can provide at least a partial test of that possibility. Because no
“pre” observations exist, the comparisons between the parental and offspring
generations are necessarily of the static variety. To take advantage of the
younger generation’s age range, the analysis was carried out on two subgroups:
those individuals 19–24 years of age (mean age p 22, N p 321) and those
older than 24 (mean age p 29, N p 315 ). Those aged 15–18 were dropped
because they would not have been eligible to vote in the 1996 election.16
As expected, Internet access runs higher among members of the younger
generation, at 64 percent compared with their parents’ level of 50 percent.
Similarly, their use of the Internet for political purposes exceeds that of their
parents—19 percent versus 13 percent. Such usage expands to 23 percent
when considering only those over 24 years of age.17 Importantly, this gen-
eration gap occurs between a birth cohort most likely at the peak of its political
engagement and two birth cohorts still on an upward curve. A simple ex-
trapolation based on the age/engagement nexus and the continuing prolifer-
ation of the Internet points toward a much higher level of Internet political
activity among these younger cohorts when they reach the midcentury mark
now occupied by their parents.
Table 6 presents the bivariate coefficients between sheer access to the In-
ternet and all the civic engagement variables common to both the parental
and offspring instruments.18 The results carry a mixed message. Relationships
are similar across the three cohorts with respect to subjective interest in public
affairs, the two measures of political efficacy, and (save for the older offspring)
reading magazines with political content. In contrast to these similarities in-
volving less instrumental indicators of political engagement, less consistency
characterizes the comparisons involving concrete, purposive behavior.
Whereas access has a positive bearing on community problem solving, general
political activity, and volunteer activities in the parental generation, the con-
nection is weak to middling in the two younger ones.
The absence of a relationship for volunteer activities in the two younger
cohorts almost certainly reflects life cycle effects, with the quantity and nature

16. The number of offspring respondents varies across families, which raises the issue of whether
the data should be weighted. Comparisons between the results based on weighted and unweighted
data revealed very slight differences. Consequently, the unweighted results are presented here.
17. The overall figure of 21 percent for the younger generation, often dubbed the X generation,
matches almost exactly the percentage for Xers based on a 1996 survey (Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press 1996).
18. The number of matches is limited because of the time constraints imposed by virtue of the
self-administered questionnaire used on the younger generation.
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 327

Table 6. Contemporaneous Correlates of Access to Internet among Three

Age Groups

Parental Generation Older Offspring Younger Offspring

(Mean Age p 50) (Mean Age p 29) (Mean Age p 22)

Magazine reading .21*** .08 .19**

Interest in public
affairs .16*** .17** .16**
Internal political
efficacy .22*** .18** .21**
External political
efficacy .21*** .16** .24**
Community problem
solving .17*** .08 .11*
Political activity .24*** .17** .16**
Volunteer activities .17*** .04 .09
Political trust .07* .12* .04
Social trust .06 .19** .11
Note.—Entries are product-moment correlations. N’s range from 862 to 927 for the parental
generation, from 306 to 313 for older offspring, and from 314 to 320 for younger offspring.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

of volunteer efforts varying considerably across the two biological generations.

Note also the absence of a negative relationship between Internet access and
the two trust measures. Indeed, having access coincides with higher levels of
social and political trust among those in the older offspring group. Thus far,
concerns about the debilitating effects of the Internet on trust orientations in
the X and Y generations appear to be unfounded. Overall, these cross-gen-
erational comparisons suggest threads of continuity and discontinuity in terms
of how Internet use intersects with political life.
Turning to the subset of those who do and do not follow public affairs via
the Internet, we see yet more evidence of cross-generational and even within-
generation variation.19 Relationships involving the Internet and civic engage-
ment became attenuated in the parental generation according to how much
the Internet was used as a political medium. That is not necessarily the case
for the two offspring cohorts, where the correlations actually increase with
respect to magazine reading and political interest, in both cohorts, and com-
munity problem solving in the younger one (table 7). Moreover, the positive
associations with social trust found in the access/no access comparison have
now changed signs, rather decidedly so in the case of the older offspring

19. Political use of the Internet for the two younger cohorts distinguishes only between those
who do and do not use it for that purpose, in contrast to the parental generation, where gradations
of political use were obtained.
328 Jennings and Zeitner

Table 7. Contemporaneous Correlates of Internet Use for Following Public

Affairs among Three Age Groups

Parental Generation Older Offspring Younger Offspring

(Mean Age p 50) (Mean Age p 29) (Mean Age p 22)

Magazine reading .04 .21** .25**

Interest in public
affairs .14** .28** .27**
Internal political
efficacy .05 .12 .06
External political
efficacy .03 .00 .09
Community problem
solving .14** .02 .18**
Political activity .16** .14 .16*
Volunteer activities .11* .02 .07
Political trust .09 ⫺.04 .09
Social trust .04 ⫺.20** ⫺.05
Note.—Entries are product-moment correlations. N’s range from 427 to 456 for the parental
generation, from 175 to 181 for older offspring, and from 219 to 225 for younger offspring.
* p ! .05.
** p ! .01.
*** p ! .001.

cohort. Importantly, this is the first indication uncovered in our entire analysis
that supports the pessimistic view of Internet use with respect to this com-
ponent of social capital.
The findings regarding the two indicators of political attentiveness, reading
political content in magazines (a “demanding” medium) and political interest,
are especially compelling because the two younger cohorts differ so much
internally. Nearly half of the older group has a college degree, three-fourths
are working full time, and one-half are married. Comparable figures for the
junior cohort are one-fifth for college degree, one-half for full-time employ-
ment, and one-tenth for being married. These stark differences notwithstand-
ing, both groups exhibit about the same connection between political use of
the Internet, on the one hand, and political interest and political reading of
magazines, on the other. And this link is stronger than for the simple dichotomy
between access and nonaccess, which was not true for their parents.
These results, based on contemporaneous relationships, suggest different
dynamics at work in the parental and offspring generations. The break between
Internet use and nonuse, while important for both generations, appears to be
somewhat more crucial for the older generation. By contrast, the break between
political use and nonpolitical use appears to be somewhat more critical for
the younger generation. In some respects, then, the associations being forged
between political use of the Internet and political attentiveness are stronger
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 329

in the two newer cohorts. A supporting finding based on a 1999 national

survey revealed that the use of the Internet for “informational exchange”
purposes had a strong, salutary impact on civic engagement of generation X
members but a very weak one on baby boomers, two groupings roughly
parallel to our parental and offspring generations, respectively (Shah, Kwak,
and Holbert 2001).
As shown above, the older offspring cohort reversed field with respect to
social and political trust when comparing political and nonpolitical Net users.
Social trust presents the most striking case. To understand what is happening
it will be helpful to array the cohort in terms of the three categories of Internet
use and their scores in the upper half of the six-point personal trust scale.
High social trust scores ran 41 percent among those with no access, 60 percent
for those with access but not using it politically, and 44 percent among those
using the Internet politically. This curvilinear pattern means that the simple
dichotomy between access and nonaccess produced a positive association with
social trust, while the dichotomy based on political use and nonuse produced
a negative one. A similar though less pronounced pattern occurs for political
trust.
These results may be a function of the interaction between the sociopolitical
climate (social trust in some decline and political trust remaining low) and
the introduction of a new communication medium as this cohort was coming
of political age. Even though averaging only 7 years younger than its older
companion, the more recent offspring cohort is at a decidedly different life
stage. If it moves in the same direction as its predecessor, there will be much
stronger support for the view that political use of the Internet breeds, or is at
least compatible with, increased social and political distrust.
The various contrasts between the junior and senior generations could reflect
either life cycle effects, compositional effects associated with the two gen-
erations, or some combination of these two factors. The two generations are
coming into the Internet at decidedly different life stages. For the parents,
political use of the Internet is being grafted on to preexisting modes of com-
munications and information seeking. Their patterns of civic engagement are
also reasonably stable. These aspects undoubtedly help account for the weak
associations between political use of the Internet and most indicators of civic
engagement, ceteris paribus. For the offspring, especially the younger portion,
the Internet is entering their media repertory along with other media (Althaus
and Tewksbury 2000) and at a time in life when their political routines are
still evolving. Illustratively, a survey in 2000 indicated that those under 30
years of age were far more likely than older people to go online at least once
a week for news (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2000).
Compositional effects are also most likely at work here. As the Internet
has become more accessible, the social composition of the user populations
has changed. Whereas education and income mattered greatly in the early
days (and still do) among older people, access extends to a wider social base
330 Jennings and Zeitner

among younger cohorts. Thus changing social composition may interact with
Internet use to produce different connections with civic engagement.

Conclusion
Bearing in mind the nature of the sample, the longitudinal, cross-generational
research design, and range of civic engagement measures utilized, the results
of this study add to our knowledge about the connection between the rise of
the Internet and civic engagement in four ways. First, the results underscore
and attach some concrete estimates to the nature of the digital divide. Working
with the panel data based on the class of 1965, we found that the original
pre-Internet gap between those gaining and not gaining eventual Internet
access remained in place or increased slightly over time. While we cannot
rule out the contribution of other unmeasured influences, the multivariate
analysis supports the guarded contention that access to the Internet retarded,
at the very least, any relative lowering of civic engagement predispositions
and behaviors. In this sense the pessimistic view that the Internet would simply
map onto or perhaps exacerbate already existing inequalities in civic en-
gagement is warranted. Correspondingly, the alternative pessimistic view that
Internet use would somehow lead to a decline in civic engagement is clearly
not warranted.
The second major conclusion to be drawn is that the contemporaneous
connections between Internet use and civic engagement were substantially
reduced when attention is restricted to Internet users and how much they
employ the medium to follow or engage in public affairs. Importantly, this
reduction applied especially to political attentiveness via other media, thereby
suggesting that the Internet performs a somewhat different function than do
the traditional media. Nevertheless, the fact that political use of the Internet
accompanied higher scores on several measures of political involvement sug-
gests that the more actively engaged individuals have incorporated the Internet
into their political repertories. The different results for media attentiveness
and political involvement illustrate the importance of distinguishing across
measures of civic engagement. Notwithstanding the positive contemporaneous
associations just noted, the multivariate panel analysis revealed that frequency
of political use of the Internet was statistically insignificant for nearly all of
the civic engagement indicators, although the exceptions were noteworthy.
Thus other factors, most especially previous levels of civic engagement, are
generating this relationship between political involvement and political use
of the Internet. The intradigital divide, specified in terms of explicitly political
usage, is much narrower than the interdigital gap.
A third conclusion involves the specific topic of trust orientations. Spec-
ulations about the depersonalizing impact of Internet use as represented in
interpersonal trust, a postulated key component of social capital, find no sup-
Internet Use and Civic Engagement 331

port in our analysis of the class of 1965, though strong hints of that association
did surface in the younger cohorts. Similarly, access to and using the Internet
for political communication did not foster greater levels of political distrust,
a finding that transcends the generations. The origins and dynamics of political
trust orientations appear to be immune to the workings of the Internet.
A final conclusion reached is that the effects of the Internet differ between
upcoming and contemporary adult generations. While the findings for the
offspring from the class of 1965 tended to resemble those of their parents
with respect to access compared with no access, sharper differences did emerge
with respect to political use of the Internet. Moreover, the two subcohorts
within the offspring generation differed somewhat. We speculated that both
compositional and generational effects were at work, a key determinant being
the intersection between the stage of individual political development and
incorporation of the Internet into one’s media repertory. The moral here is
that findings and projections about the Internet and civic vitality based on
studies of extant adult populations will almost certainly be subject to sub-
stantial revision as the population turns over.

Appendix A

Measures and Index Construction

All of the indexes utilize cumulative scoring.
Interest in public affairs (0–3). Based on answers to: “Some people seem to think
about what’s going on in government most of the time whether there’s an election
going on or not. Others aren’t that interested. Would you say you follow what’s going
on in government most of the time, some of the time, only now and then, or hardly
at all?”
Political activity (0–9). The specific items for this index are given in the text.
Cronbach’s coefficient of reproducibility (alpha) for this measure averaged .76 across
the two waves.
Political knowledge (0–7). Number of correct answers to seven factual questions.
“About how many years does a U.S. Senator serve?”; “Marshall Tito was a leader in
what country?”; “Do you happen to know about how many members there are on the
United States Supreme Court?”; “During World War II, which nation had a great many
concentration camps for Jews?”; “Do you happen to remember whether President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Republican or a Democrat?”; “Who succeeded John
Kennedy as President?”; and “Do you know a country that borders on North or South
Vietnam?” Averaged alpha was .65.
Political trust (0–5). Constructed from responses to five statements: “Do you think
that quite a few of the people running the government are dishonest, not very many
are, or do you think hardly any of them are dishonest?”; “Do you think that people
in the government waste a lot of the money we pay in taxes, waste some of it, or
don’t waste very much of it?”; “How much of the time do you think you can trust
the government in Washington to do what is right—just about always, most of the
332 Jennings and Zeitner

time, or only some of the time?”; “Do you feel that almost all of the people running
the government are smart people who usually know what they are doing, or do you
think that quite a few of them don’t seem to know what they are doing?”; and “Would
you say the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for
themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all the people?” Responses were summed
and then bracketed to produce the six-category index. One missing data value was
allowed. Higher scores indicate more trust. Averaged alpha was .58.
Social trust (0–6). Based on responses to three questions: “Generally speaking,
would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in
dealing with people?”; “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful
or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?”; and “Do you think that most
people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance or would they try to
be fair?” Volunteered responses of depends, etc., were given a middle value. One
missing data value was allowed. Higher scores indicate more trust. Averaged alpha
was .72.
External political efficacy (0–2). Based on agree, disagree (efficacious) responses
to these statements: “I don’t think public officials care much what people like me
think” and “People like me don’t have any say about what the government does.”
Higher scores indicate greater efficacy. Alpha averaged .54 across the two waves.
Internal political efficacy (0–2). Based on agree, disagree (efficacious) answers to
these following items: “Voting is the only way people like me can have any say about
how the government runs things” and “Sometimes politics and government seem so
complicated that a person like me can’t really understand what’s going on.” Higher
scores indicate greater efficacy. Although this measure has a low level of reliability
(averaged alpha of .26), we have combined the two items into one measure in keeping
with conventional practice in the literature.
Organizational memberships (0–7). Types of organizations appearing in each year
or coded from an open-ended follow-up included: church-connected groups; lodges
or fraternal groups; neighborhood clubs or associations; sports teams; informal clubs
or groups; business or professional groups; service groups; nonpartisan or other civic
groups; ethnic, racial, or nationality associations; support or self-help groups; veterans
groups; music, art, or other cultural groups; groups dealing mainly with youth; groups
focusing on specific political issues; groups that support liberal or conservative causes
generally; and labor unions (asked as a separate question).

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