Explaining Inequality Within and Between Information Societies
Researchers who study technology diffusion in a global and comparative manner often find that economic productivity explains differences in the diffusion rates of information and communication technologies. But researchers who study technology diffusion at a national or local level often find that politics and culture explains different diffusion rates. How do we make use of different kinds of conclusions drawn from different levels of analysis? Which types of policy reforms have an impact on technology adoption?
In this talk I present some of the findings of the World Information Access Project, an Intel and NSF-funded endeavor to improve our understanding of inequality in the distribution of information and communication infrastructure within and between countries. Two benchmarking methods allow some comparative perspective on the global distribution of internet users, personal computers, mobile phones, internet hosts and bandwidth. The Technology Diffusion Index weights diffusion data by economic wealth to set into sharp relief the ways in which other factors — such as politics and culture — influences adoption. Gini coefficients demonstrate the uneven distribution of technology access over categories of social inequality such as education, income, and age. I will explain these indices and present some new findings from our time-series cross-sectional study of technology diffusion in 154 countries between 1990 and 2007.
There are two key reasons for the unequal distribution of technologies over the last decade: economic disparities have prevented any meaningful "leap-frogging" in the development of information infrastructure; national privatization reforms in many telecommunications markets have not had consistent effects on technology adoption. Implications for public policy, industry, and research are evaluated.
Philip Howard (BA Toronto, MSc London School of Economics, PhD Northwestern) is an associate professor of communication at the University of Washington and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. His current research and teaching interests include the role of new information technologies in the political communication systems of advanced democracies, and the role of new information technologies in the social development of poor countries.
He is the author of New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), about how information technology is by political elites to structure public opinion and political culture in the United States. This book was awarded the 2007 CITASA Best Book prize from the American Sociological Association and the 2008 Best Book prize from the International Communication Association. He has edited Society Online: The Internet in Context (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004, with Steve Jones) and the Handbook of Internet Politics (London: Routledge, 2008, with Andrew Chadwick). He has authored numerous journal articles examining the role of new information and communication technologies in politics and social development, including pieces in the American Behavioral Scientist, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and New Media & Society. He has worked on several National Science Foundation projects, serving on the advisory board of the Survey2000 and Survey2001 Projects, co-managing a project about Information and Communication Technologies in Central Asia, and directing the World Information Access Project. This latest research project—supported by both the NSF and Intel's People and Practices Group—investigates patterns of technology diffusion between and within developing countries.
Profesor Howard teaches courses on research methods, politics online, and international development. He has been a Fellow at the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington D.C., the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto.
