[Air-l] Iraq and the internet

[robert m. tynes]

Dear Gina and all:

In response to Gina's -

> From the research I've seen,
> emails aren't taken as seriously as handwritten notes or letters in one's
> own words. And emails don't get covered by the New York Times; marches of
> over 100,000 get covered by the New York Times (and the same is true for
> other cities and their hometown papers and marches -- good turnouts lead to
> coverage).

Several points I'd like to make:

1. I think that we might want to put aside past research on the effects of
e-mails in a political process. Maybe it's better to just observe what is
happening - what do e-mails to gov't officials do? maybe they don't get
read? but is that the point? could they be jamming devices, designed to
overload the system in conjunction with all the other forms of protest,
such as marches? And, yes, it is true that the NYT covered the marches but
not the e-mails; but that might mean that marches have entered into the
state institutional apparatus; hence they can be a highly controlled form
of communication. and easily commodified, via newspapers E-mail
bombardment, on the other hand, may be, at this stage, too chaotic to
institutionalize/control. Yes, you can delete an e-mail, but that's not
the unit of analysis we should look at. E-mails are not letters.

2. What happens when e-mails cross borders into other cultures? Does an
e-mailing to a Turkish official really get received in the same way that
an e-mailing to a US Congress person does? I've done some research with
West African e-mail usage. Although there are many similarities, there are
also many differences in the way that e-mail is used. So, can we make a
global generalization about e-mail yet. Or, should we wait and watch some
more.

3. I'm not an e-mail utopian raelian heaven's gate dude. Just someone
who's not so sure that the effects of e-mail can be easily quantified. It
seems much too early in the history of the history yet to happen.

-robert