| Chapter 1: | Introduction—Surveying the Cyberterrain of Developing Country Head of State Web Sites |
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The North Korean official Web site has a quotation from Great Leader Kim Il Sung, who said, “The North-American imperialist aggressors suffered an [sic] humiliating defeat in their military adventure when they tried to convert our Motherland in their colony and make the Korean people to become slaves for them”(Pyongyang, 1953; at http://www.korea-dpr.com/50war.htm). The President of Nigeria’s homepage informs browsers that “Our campaign [President Obasanjo’s Rebuilding Nigeria Campaign] must be a model. To this extent, the language, tone and tenor of our campaign shall be devoid of mudslinging, ethnicity, religion and such other mundane and pedestrian context” (President Olusegun Obasanjo; http://www.nopa.net/).
The one shared commonality among the sites is a conscious decision by a government body or individual to erect and maintain a Web site for various worldwide audiences. Brunn and Cottle (1997) note that once a government Web site is established, it becomes part of the public record of the state, accessible to a worldwide audience and subjected to almost innumerable search engines.
Worldwide, the influence of the World Wide Web on governments and related causes is well chronicled; hundreds of studies describe the rapid growth of the Web and its diffusion across cultural, linguistic, and international lines. That the Web has spread so rapidly is perhaps less surprising than the number of official Web sites that either complement or present alternate points of view to government Web sites in English. The Communist Party of Vietnam, for example, maintains a Web site in English (http://www.cpv.org.vn/). Other countries, such as Syria, do not have official government Web sites but have ministry of information Web sites in English. Cambodia, ranked in the top 50 poorest countries in the world in 2003 with a GDP per capita of $1,600,2 offers a council of ministers press and communication department Web site in English. Ethiopia, ranked as the 10th poorest country in the world by GDP,3 also has an “office of the government spokesperson” Web site in English, although that site was last modified on January 10, 2001 (see Table 1-1 for a list of country GDP per capita for the countries included in this study).