The Nobel Peace Prize committee will have to choose a winner out of a record 237 nominees this year.

Last year held the record with 205 nominees, before this year’s 199 individuals and 38 organizations beat it.

Campaign poster for internetforpeace.org in Arabic one of many languages it will be translated into. (Courtesy: internetforpeace.org)

“The long-term trend has been upwards. Not every year, but almost every year, we have a record,” Geir Lundestade, the committee’s permanent secretary, told the Associated Press. “I also think there’s a short-term trend. There’s a renewed interest in the prize after it went to President Barack Obama last year.”

Among the nominations, the most attention has been on the unusual candidacy of the Internet itself.

Somewhat suprising is the amount of high-profile support the Internet nomination is getting.

In order to be nominated, someone of prominance must nominate an individual or organization. That includes members of governments, international courts or past Nobel Prize winners.

One of the early backers is 2003’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

“The Internet can also be used to fuel war and terrorism, as Taliban proselytism clearly show,” Ebadi told Wired Italy(article in Italian).  “The spreading of the news about the Tehran riots, however – that raced at a pace of 220,000 tweets per hour – was way too overwhelming to make us doubt that it would have been possible without the Internet."

It is not a coincidence that during the first trials against the protesters, the (Iranian) attorney general accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of conspiring against the establishment,” said Ebadi.

Wired Italy is going to support the nomination of the Internet, with the help of the U.S and British editions of the magazine, starting with the September 2010 issue.

The movement has a website www.internetforpeace.org, which lists Ebadi among other prominent supporters such as Umberto Veronesi, Giorgio Armani, Chris Anderson, Riccardo Luna, David Rowan, Nicholas Negroponte, Joi Ito, Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire, Zeferino Andrade De Alexandre Martins, and Luis Federico Franco Fomez.

The campaign is gaining momentum mostly due to a youtube video made by the movement and promoed by the aforementioned website.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee usually keeps nominees secret, but sometimes nominators announce their candidates, as is the case with the Internet this year.