About Modern Politics

Modern Politics (modpol.org) is an experimental solo project that documents how networked technologies have reshaped American political life since the early 1990s. It gathers and synthesizes public reporting, academic research, and primary documents into a neutral record of the internet era’s influence on democracy.

It is made by one person, Germán Greiner, working with AI assistance for drafting and for an automated review pass. There is no editorial board, no newsroom, and no funding. Methodology & Sources describes exactly how a page is made and what that process does not check; Contributors is where to reach the maintainer.

This is a living research project, not a finished reference work. Pages are added, corrected, and expanded continuously, and their quality is uneven on purpose rather than by oversight: the long-form story and the statistics pages are written from named sources, while most encyclopedia entries are not yet cited. Every page carries a badge saying how far it has got through review, and every page has a feedback button for reporting an error. Read it the way you would read a well-organized set of notes that is openly showing its work — not the way you would read an encyclopedia that has already been checked.

The project is organized around three commitments:

Historical accuracy — Entries are written from public reporting and documentation, and rumor, speculation, and partisan messaging are treated with caution. Citation coverage is uneven: the long-form story and the statistics pages carry sources, while most encyclopedia entries do not yet. The Methodology page states the current numbers and what the review process does and does not check.
Contextual storytelling — Facts alone can obscure the human systems behind change. The project surfaces the relationships between people, technologies, movements, and institutions to help readers understand “how” and “why,” not just “what.”
Open civic literacy — The resources here are intended for journalists, researchers, educators, students, and citizens who want to understand the mechanics of contemporary politics without paywalls or advertising.

Scope of Coverage

The project focuses on the interplay between digital infrastructure and political behavior in the United States from 1994 onward. This includes:

The lifecycle of online platforms, tools, and protocols used for civic or political activity
Grassroots movements, activist networks, and emergent communities that organize online
Public policy, laws, and court rulings that govern digital speech and participation
Media ecosystems, narrative frames, and information cascades amplified by technology
Key events that signal shifts in digital strategy, governance, or civic engagement

What Is Out of Scope

The boundaries matter as much as the contents, so they are stated plainly:

Before the early 1990s. The record starts where networked political communication does. Earlier history appears only as background to something in period.
Outside the United States. Events elsewhere are covered only where they bear directly on American political life — a platform’s policy set abroad, a foreign influence operation aimed at a US election. This is not a global survey.
Politics without a digital dimension. Legislative and electoral history that does not run through platforms, media ecosystems, or networked organizing is left to the many sources that already cover it well.
Breaking news. Nothing here is written to be first. Events are added once there is enough public reporting to describe them accurately, which is usually well after they happen.
Opinion and prediction. No endorsements, no ratings of who was right, no forecasts. Where interpretations conflict, the page describes the disagreement rather than settling it.

Editorial Independence

Modern Politics is a nonpartisan, independent project. It does not accept donations, grants, or partnerships that would compromise editorial control, and it carries no advertising. See the Contributors page for more about who maintains this project, and Privacy for what the site collects when you read it.

Why This Project Exists

American politics has absorbed the logic of networked communication. Political actors now operate simultaneously across social feeds, encrypted chats, algorithmically tuned ad systems, and legacy media. Without a coherent historical record, critical debates about regulation, democratic integrity, and civic trust lack context. Modern Politics seeks to provide that shared factual foundation.

This page was last substantially updated in September 2026. Individual pages carry their own review dates, and notable changes to how the project works are recorded on the Blog / Updates page.