Bert Mulder — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:44:15 GMT

The particiaption inequality in general is an interesting topic. There is some parallels between the ‘participation inequality’ online and actual political participation. In The Netherlands only 3% of the population is an actual member of a political party, and of that membership of the largest parties roughly a third of the members is active in politicis: 1% of the population. The number of politically active people in former Russia was about 10% of the population. That might point in the direction of the participation inequality as a normal ratio for social activities in populations.
But then the perceived participation inequality holds for Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia but is different for other social media such as Myspace, Facebook and Hyves. And then there are possible differences of online social behavior in very large populations (such as the worldwide community of internetusers) and smaller populations (national, city or neighbourhood). In our experiences in neighbourhoods (populations of between 10.000 and 20.000 people) we see different behaviour and are not certain which ‘participation inequalities’ will hold.
I think that, before making assumptions about a ‘participation inequlity’ online and in real life, we need to research both more carefully.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Bert Mulder