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158 Lucienne Rey

Figure 6
Number of Communes (with more than 5,000 Inhabitants)
with and without Internet Sites: Relative Figures.

Bellinzona can be found in the “virtual world.” This area does not
come up to expectations, but the reason for this could be that the
canton as a whole is highly oriented towards tourism. Its tourist
association is correspondingly active on the Internet, and could
possibly render efforts on the part of the individual communes to
join the Web superfluous. It is not completely surprising, however,
that Ticino’s approach is different to that of the French area of
Switzerland: when voting, it is frequently evident that the Italian
language area’s affinities align themselves with the opinions of
the “German camp” at times and with those of the French area at
others.
The tables shown in Figures 5 and 6 make the predominance of
Latin Switzerland on the Web even clearer; relatively speaking, in
the French- and Rhaeto-Romansch-speaking area there are many
more communes with over five thousand inhabitants present on the
Web than in the German part of the country or Ticino.

Conclusions

Based on this (reasonably reliable) data, it is possible to confirm (or
in Popper’s sense, it is not possible to reject) the initial hypothesis
that use of the Internet and the Web is indeed more widespread in
the Latin-speaking area of Switzerland, at least as this is repre-
sented by the activities of the communal authorities.