Does the internet to influence public opinion?

It's my opinion that it does, and I'll explain why.

I'm going to be using religion as an example, but I'm sure influence through online communities is happening in other areas too. In recent months, I've noticed a massive increase in the support of atheism on sites such as digg, youtube and google video. Whilst searching for a completely different topic, I found this (Rundle, M,2007) page, which explained exactly what I'd been noticing. People have been posting videos of Richard Dawkins for example, and posting them on popular video sites. Soon after, social bookmarking sites such as digg make them popular. This has obviously made what's being said very accessible, which has given the topic of atheism a huge boost in online discussion.

Whilst digg (in my opinion) has defiantly helped raise certain topics into people's minds, sites like youtube take this further. For example, there has been one video on youtube (shown below), which challenges people to deny the existence of God. Currently, this video has 627 responses. Whether most of the responses are denying God or not, it has absolutely raised the profile of atheism, and will have influenced at least some people in some way.


(BlasphemyChallenge, 2006)

Keeping with youtube, some users devote almost all of their videos towards promoting, or at least raising awareness of one goal. CapnOAwesome (CapnOAwesome, 2007) defiantly has this approach, and while he says he's not trying to convert people to atheism, I'm sure he's had that effect on some people at least.

I'd like to know other peoples thoughts on this too. I know I used atheism as a heavy example (not too much hope), but I'm sure there are lots of other examples out there too.

CapnOAwesome (2007) CapnOAwesome [internet], youtube. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=CapnOAwesome [Accessed 10 January 2007].
BlasphemyChallenge (2006) The Blasphemy Challenge [internet], youtube. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7QVbJnSPQE [Accessed 10 January 2007].
Rundle, M (2007) Digg and YouTube Powering Atheism 2.0 [internet], Available from: http://businesslogs.com/web_20/digg_and_youtube_powering_atheism_20.php [Accessed 10 January 2007].