I don't hold much credence to it. It has about as much influence as traditional "word of mouth" has (although word of mount could be pretty powerful).
For years the on-line gurus have been telling us how the old BBBs would revolutionize human interaction and eliminate the middlemen. After BBSs it was the different pieces of the Internet itself. Political advocates predicted glory from bypassing the gatekeepers, so did a lot of other advocates. They said the same thing about community access cable TV.
Wrong!
The 'net has been an evolutionary influence, but by no means revolutionary. Certainly there's a lot of opinions published out there (like the one you're reading right now). But in the grand scheme of things, a heck of a lot more people will be reading traditional media (newspaper or TV).
We must remember that those who participate in online endeavors are not necessarily representative of the public at large, and therein lies the big fallacy of the "power of the internet".
The reality is that true everyday people are busy and don't have time to scurry through every individual's post on whatever forum it is. Internet advocates, including computer geeks, don't understand that the rest of the world does not follow technology or the 'net as they do.
This is not to say the 'net has no influence, it does have some. It just isn't this big revolution.
Sure, some people are meeting romantic partners through Internet dating, just as some people met partners through the "computer dating" of the 1960s and 1970s. But plenty of people meet through traditional means as well; they certainly haven't gone away.
While there is lots and lots of political discourse on the 'net, plenty of people still stick with traditional TV, radio, or mass media sites. Frankly, many people don't follow politics much at all.
The Internet advocates greatly dislike the traditional "gatekeepers" of communication, ie news editors, entertainment distributors. But like them or not, they are necessary to filter out the tremendous volume of stuff that comes through. People simply do not have the time or interest to watch every possible self made movie, every possible garage band, or every piece of "news".
Further, the social advocates quickly grabbed on this stuff early on, and have turned it into very partisan soapboxes, which has tuned out others who aren't as passionate. For example, there's a railroad newsgroup that doesn't spend too much time talking about railroad stuff. Rather, it is mostly flame wars between advocates of passenger trains and those who hate trains altogether. The haters seem to be very well organized and respond to almost every post. (see misc.transport.rail.americas and go through some of the threads).
Another group, alt.prisons, is all social advocacy, nothing about prisons.
These groups are proof ot the need of a moderator to sift things out. Pat has said, as have other monitors, of the incredible high volume of junk submitted for publication that is plain garbage and takes much time to sift out.
The world of journalism and entertainment gatekeepers isn't perfect. But the alternative is pure chaos. Been there done that, don't like it.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is not just the 'high volume of junk submitted for publication' although that is quite a bit of it. It is also the high volume of pure spam; stuff you would not consider for publication under any circumstances. I wish it was like in the old days, where there was a high degree of _usable_ material as long as it was cleaned up a little, had to be made grammatically correct, etc. PAT]