---
title: "Participation 2.0"
description: "As we've seen during this election season, participating online can also motivate users to participate offline."
date: "2006-11-10"
authors:
  - name: "Mary Madden"
    job_title: "Former Senior Researcher"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/mary-madden/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2006/11/10/participation-2-0/"
categories:
  - "Election 2006"
  - "Emerging Technology"
  - "Politics & Media"
  - "Politics Online"
  - "Social Media"
  - "U.S. Elections & Voters"
---

# Participation 2.0

While the term, "Web 2.0," has been used to describe a wide array of applications and businesses that are often fueled by user-generated content and designed with many-to-many communication in mind, there's one universal, operative word that sums up the essence of 2.0-ness: participatory.

But it's not simply the case that all of this participating happens online in a virtual vacuum, where content is shared, accumulated, and archived without consequence. Participating online can also motivate users to participate offline.

As we've seen during this mid-term election season, videos posted to YouTube can and do affect public opinion--however fleeting that effect might be. And those involved in get-out-the-vote campaigns who aimed to increase young voter turnout this week through [creative do-it-yourself PSAs like these](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYqL9BfXz7k) now have [some evidence](http://elections.us.reuters.com/top/news/usnN08342322.html) that their efforts may have paid off.

Yet, according to a [recent poll](http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/09/YOUNG.TMP) by Young Voter Strategies, it's still good old-fashioned word-of-mouth and on-the-street campaigning that seem to drive young voters to the polls more than anything else.

So now, the question at hand for the next election: How do we interpret the impact when door-to-door campaigners use Web-enabled PDAs to show voters videos posted on YouTube?