A Case Study In Diversity: India And Romania

Word Count: 1050

    The WWW of most URL’s (Uniform/Universal Resource Locator’s) literally translated, means the WORLD WIDE WEB. As such, one would think that it would be easy to find information and sites from virtually any point in the world. To some extent, this is the case -- but it can be very difficult. As a large part of our assignment was the comparison of the SAWNET (South Asian Women's NETwork) website, with another site which we found to be equally diverse, I chose to focus on the Indian aspect of SAWNET, as it seemed to be the most represented of all the South Asian countries. For comparison, I chose Romania, a country that I knew nothing about, as it is represented in Virtual Romania (http://www.info.polymtl.ca/zuse/ tavi/www/rom_eng.html).
    Each of the websites seemed to function for two obvious reasons: to provide some information about culture and country to interested people, and to p ‚rovide access to the atmosphere of ‘home’ for any people not living in their own country, be it India or Romania. Visually, each site is very different. Virtual Romania is very flashy, with lots of photos, java and shiny banners, and it is set up in a four frame format - very pushy. In contrast, SAWNET is much better organized, with lost of eye-easy ‘white-space’ and culturally representative yet simple graphics. I have yet to decide if this is indicative of a cultural influence, or simply gender-biased. Both sites are several years old - in fact, Virtual Romania boasts that it is "The FIRST Ever Romanian Home Page on the Internet", and was established in April of 1994, while SAWNET began in 1991, as a mailing list that eventually grew into a web site and resource center. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that several of the links posted did not work, both on the Virtual Romania site as well as SAWNET.
    The best evidence that I could find to testify to the fact that each of =the sites is well supported by expatriates, is in the Homepage listings that each of the sites maintains. These links mostly included people from foreign countries, many in Canada and the US, as well as a few from within the country’s current boundaries. Upon visiting many pages, I discovered that most people had lived in their home country for some years, and had moved for personal reasons (mainly for education and schooling) - however, many had left their country due to political turmoil that they or their families found threatening. Interestingly, many of the members of the Virtual Romania website are involved in the technical fields, especially computing and physics, while the vast majority of SAWNET homepages I visited indicated a tendency towards educational facilities (mostly University professors), and writing. (SAWNET also represented several artists’ sites.)
    Few of the homepages spoke at depth about political issues, but both of the sites themselves has extensive links and information relation to politics and religion. The Virtual Romania site predominantly features several photographs of the Pope, from his recent (May 10/99) visit to Bucharest. In addition, there is a huge headline about Romania’s recent invitation to join the EuropeThis is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Electronic References. Please register below now!

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