This comment requires careful thought, because it is the dawning of an english major trying to interpret, someone elses statistical interpretation.

Plato had this great idea about the realm of forms, where there is a true form, lets say, for an activist - and the artist - is removed from that realm of forms, because he makes an image of , lets say - the activist, in his writing. Plato's ideal was to write only with the conviction and analysis of science, which in the 21st century demands at least some discussion of uncertainty and factors that could correlate to a real explanation of the data, instead of someone else's ideas based on their assumptions.

One could speak personally, which would be nice, given that this is a blog. In fact, whats really fun sometimes is to know who needs to keep their anonymity in order to get anything done... Bowers is obviously living in the limelight, but maybe the real heavy lifting is done behind the scenes.. or in the middle of the night... who knows. Those people would have only one outlet, because they can't work anywhere else. Showing up to flyer door to door is great - but when was the last time you actually bought something from a door to door salesman?

Alright - so lets get into it. Personal aside.
First, speaking as an activist whose main goal is disintermediation (my big action item these days is to support removal of "riders") - try this approach - read the actual data, in a spreadsheet where you can crunch it yourself!. Excel has everything you need for really easy, and sophisticated analysis.

Then, the next thing you want to look at is the original report  of the data ,  note well, that the people analysing the data are not english majors!  They're math majors like me.

Ok. Now, we're getting somewhere.  Now lets play the standard game. Suppose you don't have enough to page through about 20 pages of a report , that you're reading just for kicks anyway.  Go with logic.

1. The analysis of the report, is true.
2. The analysis of the report is untrue.

If its untrue, do a reality check on your own activism, donate more, join moveon.org and get out of my face.

If its true - ask the question - what could be the correlating factors? Now, take the socratic method. Explore the relative truth, by showing one case where it is not true and see if the logic holds.  (cf. Meno)

From the study:

Controlling for either income or education, ... mutes the difference between frequent and occasional... both levels of use have strong positive effects on political participation, relative to never using the Internet.

And now, we ask - in the standard socratic dialogue - who could this user be? A newbie of course. So, is it true, that newbies who jump onto the blogs don't spend alot of time as activists.

A telling footnote:

"3 It is important to note that these comparisons are not of the same
people over time. These comparisons are conducted by sorting
individuals into income groups within a given year (the bottom
fifth, the next fifth, up to the top fifth) and then calculating the
average income within each group for that year. Then for some
later year the same process is repeated and the comparison is of
those in the bottom fifth for one year with the bottom fifth for
another year. There could or could not be considerable mobility
among income groups from year to year, a separate but very
important matter."

Now let us ask - if we don't have newbies - and after all - who would be the veterans, but those who were already in the industry or computer savvy to begin with - what would the effect of this factor be?

This is why English Majors don't make good statisticians.  

The truth is, most of the veterans and really avid online users at the top end are now battling the effects of offshoring, and are apolitical only for the fact that the cost of action exceeds that, which they can time afford.

Now, let us ask if this were not true, ie. if the time afford would be great enough and the tech sector stabilizing. Well, this would clearly trend upward for employment.

But when we check employment, we find offshoring increasing at the rate of 25% per annum, and a surprisingly high rise in white collar - programmer level unemployment. In other words,

This poll doesn't show that people who are avid online users, are apolitical. Instead, it could point to a clearly disturbing trend amongst our high tech sectors  - one that was pointed out in several other published studies. There have been massive layoffs and pay cuts in that sector.

If you alias out that very vocal and very verbal group, you will likely again mute the differences.  It is probably very frustrating, in fact, to see that there are so many who talk here of Union power - but for which the largest sector of the american services labour force is entirely unrepresented and offshoring to account for one in  five of all jobs.

when I add in that factor, I find that bowers analysis of someone elses analysis doesn't hold water.

by the way, since I am a small business owner, I spend my time  very wisely and the envelope pasting stuff I will leave to the other folks.