There are a lot of citizen media websites and publications sprouting up, but why? Some, perhaps most, of these ventures are money-making propositions. Others, however, have more idealistic, utopian goals. In the spirit of Dean's internet campaign, they want to reengaged the community in civic life. The latter is where my interest in citizen media comes from. But there is no empirical evidence to support the notion that citizen media is related to civic participation in a meaningful way, much less that it is expanding it. We say people are empowered by the internet, but are they empowered in any meaningful way and what do they do with that empowerment?

It seems that the conventional wisdom is that the internet is reinvigorating civic participation. How many stories did we hear from the Dean campaign about fist-time voters or older voters who had been alienated who voted in the primaries (and hopefully the general election) because of Dean's internet campaign? Beyond anecdotal information, however, nobody has tested whether virtual communities are rebuilding civic life, replacing civic life, or are simply driven by the same people who still belong to towns' clubs, PTA groups, churches, etc.

For my master's thesis, I hope to profile people who submit to citizen media sites in order to find out what drives them to submit, and what impact this activity may have on civic engagement and consumption of traditional media. I may also look at "lurkers," those you might be visiting these websites and not submitting, and study whether we can convince them to submit, or need to simply write them off.

This interest and research concepts are developing, so if you have suggestions please leave comments.