Democracy requires dialog and part of
that dialog should come from my fellow rural citizens however for
some that is more difficult than their urban counterparts. Attending
a townhall meeting or a rally at the local MPs office can mean a 1 or
2 hour drive, often those living away from sizable communities can
become isolated from both their local community and even the ever
changing political world. The salvation for me is the internet,
however even now after increasing my connection speed 5 fold over my
previous dial up I have limitations on volume with incurring extra
costs.
With this in mind a couple of weeks ago
we posted an online survey designed to find out what type of internet
connection the majority of rural folks had and how many of them used
or were interested in online forums. This to promote the formation of
a forum dedicated to rural communities across Ontario and / or Canada
something
which a number of folk have been considering for the last year or
so..
The readership of The
Rural Canadian is not exactly overwhelming, it only sees about
600 'page reads' a month and the response to the survey has been
considerably less than that. Thus far 100% of the respondents have
been urban residents so if you are a rural citizen and are reading
this please fill out the very brief survey linked at the end of this
post..
The results thus far indicate that
those 'urban' folks who did respond nearly all have high speed
unlimited internet, use online forums and email 'lists of digests'
and are open to using a Rural Forum if it is formatted to their
liking. They get their community information mostly from face to face
meetings and the internet and less so from newspaper and radio, this
is a surprise to me but I suspect that those who view my blog and
filled out the survey are hardly 'typical'. As I have said before
such surveys, indeed any survey, is biased by both the distribution
of it and by those who are inclined to answer such things. This then
is a long way form a 'scientific' poll but just a effort to gain a
little more insight as to how my readers get their information and
whether their internet connection affects their use of online forums
and the like.
Please take a look at the survey and
consider filling it out particularly if you live in rural Canada, it
consists of just 6 questions and may be found here:-
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GZZYVPK
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