ICT expansion and the digital divide in democratic freedoms: An analysis of the impact of ICT expansion, education and ICT filtering on democracy |
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Authors: | Farid Shirazi Ojelanki Ngwenyama Olga Morawczynski |
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Affiliation: | aInstitute for Research on Innovation and Technology Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada;bSciences Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK |
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Abstract: | In recent years, several case studies have appeared on how mobile telephones, SMS and the Internet had an impact on political activities. It has been widely argued that information and communication technology (ICT) is influencing democracy all over the world. However, few studies provide any analysis of how ICT expansion correlates with measures of democracy. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the global expansion of ICT and the level of democracy within nations. We analyze archival data on 133 countries from 1995 to 2003, which was the period-of-time of explosive ICT expansion. Some important findings of our study are: (a) there is a growing digital divide in democratic freedoms among countries; (b) in spite of rapid ICT expansion in some countries, Internet filtering is having a significant impact on democratic freedoms. |
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Keywords: | ICT Digital divide e-Democracy e-Government e-Citizen ICT filtering ICT stock ICT freedom |
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