Case study: public consensus building on the Internet.

Abstract

Many groups or organizations advocating different special interests or policies now promote and conduct grassroots movements online through their own web sites. On the basic assumption that collective activities on the Internet are another form of social phenomenon, the process of public consensus-building on the Internet, and the ways in which various functions available on the Internet were strategically used to facilitate the public's involvement and participation were examined. The Frame Alignment Process was adopted as a conceptual framework for this study. Based on this framework, four related but not identical processes--"frame bridging," "frame amplification," "frame extension," and "frame transformation"--were elaborated, and various functions on the Internet facilitating this frame alignment process were examined. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's successful online campaign to prevent the passage of the Communication Decency Act of 1996 was chosen as a real-world case to elaborate a frame alignment process and the effective use of various functions on the Internet.