A recipient of the electronic documents thus has more the posture of the good citizen than the political junky. Her typical level of political involvement includes voting and writing occasional letters to elected officials about an issue, but not regularly working on behalf of candidates or issues. (25%report they have worked for a candidate or issue on an occasional basis.) Similarly a recipient's attentiveness to other news media resembles that of non-recipients with similar educational background, except for slightly more use of print media and a much higher probability of using online journals and distributed hypertext (27%of customers report such use.)
The level of satisfaction with the publication, presentation and distribution of the documents is fairly high, averaging 3.75 on a 5-point scale. People however rate the importance of the documents being published higher than the relevance of the documents for them (4 vs. 3). This result indicates a need for facilities which would enable the public to order or retrieve documents more specific to their interests.
Still the documents are valued. Most people share them with others, with about 28%of active recipients doing so by email. 70%of customers used some document material in political discussions, either to support or attack an administration policy or to support or critique its performance. And many of the distributors are apparently individuals who want to use the documents to raise consciousness or organize debate around an issue.