1. Cassandra L. Koerner Colorado State University

2. Fracking in Colorado Interest Group Literature Political Communications Literature Methods Results Conclusions

3. Colorado is 6 th in the nation for natural gas production. In September 2014, Colorado had over 52,500 active oil and gas wells—and over 90 percent of those wells were utilizing hydraulic fracturing. After the passing of a fracking moratorium in Longmont in 2012, the communities of Fort Collins, Broomfield, Boulder and Lafayette garnered support for similar ballot issues.

4. Interest groups exist to solve collective action problems (Olson, 1965) In order to maintain support and public attention, groups have traditionally provided members information by mailing monthly or quarterly reports. Scholars have proposed the Internet would increase democracy in America by recruiting inactive citizens into public participation, increasing access to diverse sources of political information, and providing a new forum for public debate (Hindman, 2009).

5. Some researchers worried that the excitement over the potential of the Internet was misplaced and expected groups to use blogs and social network sites to fulfill the same functions. A promising angle is the skewed utilization of these different types of media by traditionally under-represented groups. These new methods were also seen as a means for communication between members and leaders, instead of the one-to-many communication methods of the past.

8. Use Teleport Pro to download websites for each interest group. Utilize the methods of Merry (2010) for blog assessment. Look at blogs during 2013: examine the platform and content Facebook analysis using methods of Nitschke et al (2014) by assessing posts by group Oct 15- Nov 15, 2013. Break into categories of linkages, transparency, mobilization, resource generation, interaction and information dissemination.

16. Groups have adopted blogs and Facebook as means to communicate with both the public and their members Blogs and Facebook do not appear to increase the participation of members in conversations with group leaders In general, there is limited evidence to support the idea that the Internet is allowing interest group leaders to step back from the mic and allow participants to drive issue conversations

17. I would like to thank Dr. Duffy and Dr. Saunders for their reviews and assistance with the analysis of this research project. Thank you to the Dr. Scholl’s Foundation for funding this research endeavor.