Shanthi Kalathil, Taylor C. Boas: Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · censorship, e-government, human rights, internet, mass media, politics
As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet’s early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policy makers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change.
In Open Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.
Publisher Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 2003
Global Policy Books series
ISBN 0870031945, 9780870031946
217 pages
Journal of Community Informatics (2004–)
Filed under journal | Tags: · activism, civil society, community, community informatics, digital divide, e-government, gender, ict, information technology, internet, learning, technology, wireless networks
“Community Informatics (CI) is the study and the practice of enabling communities with Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). CI seeks to work with communities towards the effective use of ICTs to improve their processes, achieve their objectives, overcome the “digital divides” that exist both within and between communities, and empower communities and citizens in the range of areas of ICT application including for health, cultural production, civic management, e-governance among others. CI is concerned with how ICT can be useful to the range of traditionally excluded populations and communities, and how it can support local economic development, social justice and political empowerment using the Internet. CI is a point of convergence concerning the use of ICTs for diverse stakeholders, including community activists, nonprofit groups, policymakers, users/citizens, and the range of academics working across (and integrating) disciplines as diverse as Information Studies, Management, Computer Science, Social Work, Planning and Development Studies. Emerging issues within the CI field include: community access to the internet, community information, online civic participation and community service delivery, community and local economic development, training networks, telework, social cohesion, learning, e-health and e-governance. The Journal of Community Informatics aims to bring together a global range of academics, CI practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers policy makers. Each issue of the Journal of Community Informatics contains a number of double blind peer-reviewed research articles as well as commentaries by leading CI practitioners and policy makers providing feedback on how the significance and application of research for practice and policy development.”
Editor in Chief: Michael Gurstein
Associate editors: Shaun Pather, Alvin Wee Yeo
Open access
ISSN 1712-4441