Professor Dr. Philip N. Howard of the University of Washington Department of Communication has published The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam (2010). Here is a summary:
Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing political identities online, and digital technologies are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites.
With unique data on patterns of media ownership and technology use, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy demonstrates how, since the mid-1990s, information technologies have had a role in political transformation. Democratic revolutions are not caused by new information technologies. But in the Muslim world, democratization is no longer possible without them.
- first book to move beyond potential and hypothetical relationships between technology diffusion and democratic transitions to look at lived experiences for countries under study
- Draws on a statistical study that compares data trends across 74 Muslim countries between 1990 and 2008
- Addresses 2009 presidential elections in Iran
Some of the research reported in this book was produced in connection with the projects The Effect of the Internet on Society: Incorporating Central Asia into the Global Perspective and Human Centered Computing: Information Access, Field Innovation, and Mobile Phone Technologies in Developing Countries.
[NOTE: This post was last updated 25 September 2010.]
