Bridging the Digital Divide:

New Media Use in Developing Countries
BY Nicole Cordier

 

Nicole Cordier is a graduate student in the Master's in Media Studies program at the New School. Academically, her interest is in media and commununcations as they relate to grassroots and sustainable development. Her day job is in the communications department of the ACLU, where she does marketing aimed at young adults. She wishes she had more time to ride a bike and take photos.

 

Undoubtedly, globalization is a paradoxical process with both positive and negative implications for the social welfare of the world. This paper explores some of the aspects of globalization as it involves the proliferation of new media technologies. In particular, I look at the ways in which new media differ from older forms of media and explore how new media are being used by people in developing countries and communities to access global information and develop voices that reach beyond the local. My argument is that, across the world, new media are promoting innovative forms of community and creating unique opportunities for learning about and redefining the world in which we live.

Manuel Castells notes that, “the prophetic hype…characterizing most discourses on the information technology revolution should not mislead us into underestimating its truly fundamental significance,” (Castells, 1997, p. 29). Indeed, new media and communications technologies, including the Internet and email, have been instrumental in the globalization process. They have helped create a truly global economy by making immediate, or “real-time,” trading possible. They have also opened up a space for interpersonal and interactive cultural communication on a global level. “Globalization,” however broadly it is understood, would not exist today were it not for new media.

New media are fundamentally different from older forms of “mass” broadcast media. While both old and new forms of media are now global in reach, older forms of media, such as television and (commercial) radio are characterized by a one-way flow of information. You cannot talk back to a major network television station and impact the outcome of its transmissions. In contrast, a different type of communication, one that is multidirectional and user-controlled, characterizes new media. Many have argued that new media are fundamentally more democratic, participatory and accessible than television and radio. They allow “the masses” to be producers, not just consumers, of mediated communication. As Castells notes, “the diffusion of technology endlessly amplifies the power of technology, as it becomes appropriated and redefined by its users…[to the extent that] users and doers [i.e. makers, or producers] may become the same” (Castells, 1997, p. 31). This is no more evident than with the recent expansion of open source software, which allows users to change the basic functioning of their computers and software to fit their unique needs.

The ways in which new media are helping people create/find voices and engage in interactive learning processes are well documented (Girard, 2003; Anderson, 2004). As Jon Anderson notes, “socially, the Internet arrives in developing countries along with other technologies that together open channels of communication, choice, and…participation in an expanding public sphere fostered by popular access” (Anderson, 2004, ¶ 4). UNESCO and other organizations’ implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) programs in developing countries speaks directly to this trend. New media are helping promote sustainable, locally informed development projects in these regions and are positively impacting many poor communities that are underserved and underrepresented in global mass media landscapes.

Globalization and its related/resulting technologies have opened up a vast expanse of multidirectional channels of communication, leading development organizations to promote access to communication and information as a fundamental human right. Organizations such as UNESCO, which base their work on principles of sustainable human development, have acknowledged the importance of access to local and global information in promoting democracy and encouraging government transparency, civic participation and open learning. There has also been recognition among international and regional rights organizations of the benefits of access to communication channels such as computers, the Internet and email in creating and sustaining empowered individuals and communities. As UNESCO notes, “The rights to culture include the possibility for each man to obtain the means of developing his personality, through his direct participation in the creation of human values and of becoming, in this way, responsible for his situation, whether local or on a world scale,” (O’Siochru, 2003, p. 74).

New media and related ICT projects are promoting personal empowerment and agency by giving people opportunities to develop and voice their ideas and opinions, and to learn about and communicate practical and cultural information to the world at large. In Kothmale, Sri Lanka for example, UNESCO introduced computers and related new media technologies to supplement a successful community radio station, Kothmale Community Radio (KCR). The initiative is called the Kothmale Internet Radio project. In addition to promoting individual access to computers and Internet, project participants from the radio station use the new media technologies during their radio programs to answer questions and develop an information and education database for future use by community members (Hughes, 2003).

During these radio programs, presenters select a topic or theme and relevant, reliable websites and complement the program with local experts as special guests (a local doctor for a health program, for example). Listeners call in with questions, and the expert guest and radio presenter discuss the mostly English-language websites directly in the national languages, Tamil and Sinhalese. They also describe the websites and explain the web browsing process that they are using. In this way, listeners are able to benefit from the information accessed and are introduced to instructions that will allow them to access the web themselves (Hughes, 2003). These programs actively encourage the use of the Internet by listeners, and listeners know that the information accessed will remain available in the community database if they wish to make use of it.

In addition to the radio programs, the Kothmale Internet Radio Project also offers community members opportunities to access computers and the Internet individually. Users are encouraged (but not required) to note in a logbook what sort of information they are accessing. The log shows a farmer researching organic tomato farming, a baker looking for new recipes and young people looking for international job opportunities (Hughes, 2003). Importantly, UNESCO has trained local community members to facilitate the use of the equipment in cases where individuals are unfamiliar with computers. Illiterate community members also use the facilities. In her discussion of the project, Stella Hughes (2003) notes an example of an elderly woman seeking the help of a facilitator to find information about a sacred Buddhist site in India. Local efforts to train people to build web pages in Tamil and Sinhalese have also sprung up, possibly as a result of the Kothmale Internet Radio Project, and in response to a demand for greater access to ICTs, there are now Internet and computer access points at two local libraries.

The assumption behind the project’s approach is that the Internet can be useful for everyone. It challenges the belief that the Internet is the sole domain of professionals and academics, and that it is intrinsically part of a consumer life-style. The radio programs’ use of the Internet, and the development of a community database offer a “new way of creating shared meanings and interpretations of information” (Hughes, 2003, p. 2) that is accessed via the Internet. It challenges the prevailing assumption that new media use is intrinsically an individual, solitary activity. Additionally, providing access to the computers allows individuals to interact on the web and communicate beyond their local environments. For example, there are many students that access the computer center after school to surf the web, often in English, and for email exchanges. Furthermore, an active and influential environmental NGO, Green Lanka Environmental Preservation Group (Glanka), is the result of the Internet learning of several Kothmale residents who decided to “do something” with their new found IT resources (Hughes, 2003).

The Kothmale Internet Radio project and similar developments in the region speak to the fact that new media are not exclusively the domain of the developed world. Although access is circumscribed in developing countries, many development organizations have realized the benefits of global access to these technologies and have acted to bridge this “digital divide” In my research, I have read about ICT initiatives and related new media endeavors in developing regions all over the world, including projects in Mozambique, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, South Africa, Mali, and Afghanistan.
These new media projects promote civic participation and access to global knowledge and information. Maybe more importantly, they promote agency and personal empowerment, because communities and individuals are able to define their own understandings of the world and communicate these “new” definitions to the larger community/world. Users develop their interests and voice their own ideas and opinions beyond the local.

Globally, both old and new forms of media have become an instrumental means of defining culture and understanding the world. However, older forms of media relegated this “defining” process to an elite group of producers. In contrast, new media put the ability to communicate in the hands of users, allowing people to represent themselves instead of be represented by others.

New media are not panacea for global social welfare. Underdevelopment is the result of complex economic factors and exploitation of poor regions, countries and communities by rich ones. However, new media have helped introduce a multitude of diverse cultural voices on a global scale, and their use in this context represents one of the positive characteristics of the global era in which we live. Unhindered communication and well-rounded information that reflects the true diversity of the globe is one of the blossoming dimensions of globalization. In the developed West, we may think we understand the world, but our understanding continues to be limited by the number of perspectives that we are exposed to. The greater the number of voices and representations, the more nuanced and accurate our understanding of the world will be.

References:

Anderson, J. (2000). “New Media and Globalization in the Internet Age.” Keynote address presented at the Inaugural Conference of the Middle East Virtual Community: People Across Borders, August 1-15, 2000. Document Retrieved 12/6/04 from HYPERLINK "http://www.mevic.org/keynote.html" http://www.mevic.org/keynote.html.

Castells, M. (2000). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hughes, S. (2003). Community Multimedia Centers: Creating digital opportunities for all. In B. Girard (Ed.), The One to Watch: Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity (pp. 76-90). Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Available free of charge at: HYPERLINK "http://www.comunica.org/1-2-watch/html/download.htm" http://www.comunica.org/1-2-watch/html/download.htm.

Ó Siochrú, S., B. Girard and A. Mahan (2002). Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.