Does getting Internet access make people better citizens? Maybe not.

[Commentary] What would happen if someone who did not have Internet access suddenly got it? Would they become more interested in politics, learn more about it and even feel more able to influence the political world? It’s certainly plausible that the answer is yes. The Internet would seem to put lots of information about politics at your fingertips. And some academic research suggests that the Internet can make us better “digital citizens” -- despite the possibility that people might simply bypass online political content in favor of entertainment like sports. In our new study, we come to a less optimistic conclusion.

We based this study on a rare opportunity: to observe directly what happens when people are given Internet access for the first time. We compared two groups of people who received Internet access, and found that, as of September 2008, the group that had had Internet access for nine months was not more interested in or knowledgeable about politics, compared to the group that had not yet received access. We also followed both groups all the way to June 2010. Again, very little changed. Neither group became more interested in or knowledgeable about politics. Neither group came to feel more capable of influencing politics. Why do these findings differ from some previous research? One possibility is just that typical survey data makes it difficult to tell whether any correlation between Internet usage and political attitudes suggests actual causation. Perhaps people who are already interested in politics tend to look for political information online. Another possibility is that Internet usage may simply substitute for offline sources of political information. The third possibility is information overload. The complexity and volume of content on the Internet make actually learning difficult -- at least about politics. This isn’t to suggest that the Internet could never make us better citizens. But we would argue for very qualified expectations about how much the Internet can increase how much we care or know about politics.

[Sean Richey is an associate professor of political science and Junyan Zhu is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University]