During the days before voter registration ended, the server used by ICANN suffered from overload. Statistics published by ICANN show that over half of the registrations took place in the final ten days before the deadline (ICANN ALSC 2001b). Consequently, the point in time when the media started to cover the ICANN At Large elections had a considerable impact: Early coverage in one country could easily lead to a snowball effect, coverage shortly before the deadline to a higher number of people unable to register because of technical difficulties, while coverage starting after the 31st of July did not impact membership registrations at all.

There are two peaks in the coverage of the election over time: The first one in July, the month of the registration deadline, the second one in October, when the elections took place and the results were announced. Only 17 articles mention the At Large elections before July -- even though voter registration had started in February and the election procedure had been decided upon in March. The relative amount of election coverage compared to other topics increased over the year, until the introduction of new Top Level Domains became a more important issue in the media coverage in October/November.