Germans Lag in Internet Use

According to statistics released this week, 52% of Germans have access to the Internet. This is pretty far behind the Swedes (70%) but still ahead of the Spain (36%) and Italy (only 29%). Younger Germans in the 15-28 year-old group show greater online acceptance (86%).

The phenomenon of blogs is also beginning to attract attention in Germany. The Weblog site BLOGS has registered 1320 German Blogs. Spiegel-Online also has a lengthy article about how bloggers covered the recent Democratic National Convention in Boston. While bloggers were supposed to provide a more informal, spontaneous, unfiltered coverage of the event, most of the blog-reports were highly partisan and hewed the party line in a strict sense. But the genie is out the bottle. Even ARD is now covering the US presidential election with its very own blog!