incommunicado

I subscribe to many online discussion lists and while I hardly ever find time to read all messages (unless I happen to be responsible for drafting a summary of the discussions) and I have often wondered about the nature of these "global discussions" where there are really only a few core participants and many observers. Note that this would not be different in a face-to-face environment. There are always a few outspoken individuals and many more silent observers. A while ago, I was teaching online on a regular basis and I attempted to develop a research project to look at the types of online interactions that developed between myself and the participants in my online courses. Has there been some good analysis of the online discourse around ICT for development? There's an interesting ongoing example of a rather structured dialogue on the GKD (Global Knowledge for Development)list. It's a four-week discussion on the theme of "Technology, Globalization and the Poor." I think there has been a certain amount of emphasis on developing good practices for global online discussions. We pretty much know what works and what doesn't work but I don't think there's been a lot of work focused on analyzing the discourse... some type of content analysis.