Increased Access to Legal Information Law firms and the government have created websites that allow access to legal information such as: -Divorce, child support, maintenance, conveyancing or purchasing vehicles. -Powers of attorney -Tax and insurance liabilities for both individuals and companies.

Increased involvement in focus groups A focus group is a group of people who are invited to to analyse the benefits and drawbacks of a product e.g government policies, services, politicians e.t.c. A moderator guides the discussion. Selecting the right people is key in this process. Message boards, teleconferencing and messaging are used to facilitate discussions. An advantage of using online focus groups is that people can be drawn from all over the world, no travelling, timings are flexible

Increased involvement in focus groups Disadvantages: skilled moderators cannot always have influence. Observers are less likely to watch proceedings Focus group members may not always contribute.

Increased influence with political representatives This is achieved through a number of ways: Forums Blogs Wikis Online polls Pressure group websites And other forms of online media influence

Political use Allow political debate Freedom of speech Public participation Broadens the news base

Forums These are websites used for holding discussions on political and religious issues. Anonymous postings or pseudonyms can be used They are controlled by moderators or administrators They can be text based or use multimedia

Blogs A personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis. It is short for weblog. They can contain text or multimedia. Postings are recorded in reverse chronological order. It is unfiltered, uncensored and allows content from other users.

Wikis A wiki allow anybody to create a website of their own. Other users can add information to the blog. This is an advantage and a disadvantage. The best known wiki is wikipedia. A single page is referred to as a wiki page. Unlike a forum moderation is minimal