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The article presents information on the use of Internet's interactive technologies by newspapers to improve the coverage of public affairs. "Cyber-democracy" proposes that the Internet's ability to close gaps of time and distance with electronic interactivity has the power to make institutional journalism at least anachronistic and perhaps even unnecessary. Online Web sites associated with newspapers can offer themselves as venues for greater citizen engagement because newspapers are the traditional source of the most in-depth information regarding political communication, especially at the state, regional and local levels, and also because they are the focal point for online news consumption. The study found that the promise of online journalism to create conditions for improved political communication is largely untapped. It found that only three of the 13 devices used to operationalize online facilitation of cyber-democratic practices were present at more than 50 percent of the papers surveyed in the study.

Analysis of Facebook and Twitter activity of 38 U.S. daily newspapers found strong correlation between the news organizations' use of social media tools and the size of the community and circulation of the print edition. Larger papers were more effective in using social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparisons of online newspapers reveal few differences between public and non-public online papers. Also, online and print editions of the public journalism newspapers did not show that public journalism is better practiced online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]