Control of the online public space we surveyed is highly concentrated. Most of the distribution, whether through sources of mailing lists or retrieval from servers, involved a very few and known sources, e.g., MIT, Whitehouse.gov, ESUSDA, sunsite, Texas A&M, healthplan, Fedworld.
Different distributor types had different selection of documents, and ways of distributing them. They also differed in the association of forum or forums with their distribution. The universities and commercial vendors tended to disseminate the whole range of documents, while advocates and company distributors were focused on specific issues. The governmental and educational distributors made greater use of local networks than other distributors. Email figures most prominently in the distribution means of educational, independent and advocate distributors. BBS figure most in distribution by advocates, and independents. The educational, company and commercial distributors have the larger audiences but tend to have no associated forums.