Felix Stalder on Tue, 23 May 2000 16:47:07 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] The vaguaries of Internet Democracy |
The vaguaries of Internet Democracy: According to the German weekly _Der Spiegel_ [1], almost 17.000 individuals have registered for the election of the ICANN Board. About half are Americans (6915), the other half are Europeans. Of the Europeans, 61% are Germans (4107). This might be a bit surprising. Germany, with high local phone rates, is not necessarily the most advanced country when it comes to Internet use. However, two major initiatives, one by the Bertelsmann Foundation called _Democratic Internet_[2], and one by the said weekly and other mass media [3], have created more public awareness than anywhere else. As a comparison the number of registrants in France is 323, for all of Britain it's still under 700. This reminds one a bit of municipal votes where the turnout is so low that the results reflect more the ability of special interest groups to mobilize their member on single issues, than the opinion of the public. Not that Germany is a special interest group, but the differences in mobilization have more to do with old media and with online culture. [1] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/politik/0,1518,77799,00.html [2] http://www.stiftung.bertelsmann.de/english [3] http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/icann/ ------------------------------------------ Les faits sont faits. http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/~stalder _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold