so which is it?

1. From Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privatized its Public (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 236:

Contemporary elites have found that they need not engage in the arduous task of building a popular constituency. Public interest groups and environmental groups have large mailing lists but few active members; civil rights groups field more attorneys than protestors; and national political parties activitate a familiar few rather than risk mobilizing anonynmous millions.

2. From Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All,” The New York Times, April 3, 2005:

No, not everyone has access yet to this platform,* but it is open now to more people in more places on more days than anything like it in history. Wherever you look today–whether it is the world of journalism, with bloggers bringing down Dan Rather; the world of software, with the Linux code writers working in online forums for free to challenge Microsoft; or the world of business, where Indian and Chinese innovators are competing against and working with some of of the most advanced Western multinationals–hierarchies are being flattened and value is being created less and less within vertical silos and more and more through horizontal collaboration within companies, between companies and among individuals.

*The referent here is not precisely clear, but “this platform” roughly means: the Internet and the global information marketplace.