PROJECT ICT
It was an innocent question from a passionate 20-something mass communication student confused about existing inequalities in society, that UNESCO’s current Director of the Information Society Division answered with the words: The only inequality is the lack of opportunity. These words have stuck to my mind since the time I had started work on my Master’s dissertation, on the critical political economy of radio in my home country India. Paying attention to the crux of the gentleman’s words directed my research efforts henceforth: leading me towards my focus on studying inequalities arising out of lack of opportunity and access in developing democracies, India, in particular.
The 1998 Nobel prize awardee for his contribution to development economics, Amartya Sen, claimed in Democracy as Freedom (Anchor, 1999) that there has never been a famine in a functional democracy. The explanation behind his claim goes thus: democratic governments “have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes” (p. 16). Of note in this statement is the underlying principle of a functional democracy--the government has to face public scrutiny. This reality, in turn, begs us to delve deeper and ask: what enables and empowers the public in a way that it is able to scrutinize the government? The answer lies in, yet again, opportunity and access. In particular, partly in access to information, and partly in the opportunity to be able to freely opine and ideate.
ICTs?
Over the years starting in the 1970s, innovative new technologies such as personal computers, cable and satellite television, the Internet and related technologies have made it easier for people to access information. The merging of information and communication technologies, in particular, indicated the arrival of a new kind of society--the information society. Webster observes that “Since the mid-1990s many commentators believe that the merging...is of such consequence that we are being ushered into a new sort of society. Computer communications (e-mail, data and text communications, online information exchange etc) currently inspire most speculation about a new society in the making. The rapid growth of the internet [sic] especially with its capacities for simultaneously promoting economic success, education and the democratic process, has stimulated much commentary” (2006, p. 10).
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have been universally acknowledged as useful tools for development. Advances in personal computing, electronic innovations in the form of cable and satellite television, mobile telephony and especially the Internet, have been seen to make significant impact on education (Andrews, 2004; Condie & Munroe, 2007); in reducing poverty (Marker, McNamara & Wallace, 2002, Torero & Braun, 2006); environmental sustainability (Erdmann, Hilty, Goodman, & Arnfalk, 2004); production and economic development (Venturini, 2009; Wang 1999) to name a few. Information and communication technologies, writes Roy (2005, p. 23), “embodies a range of exchange relationship between and within individuals, groups and institutions--public and private--with predictable and unpredictable economic, social and political outcomes.”
ENABLERS
In today’s information age, the most profound function that ICTs have been credited with is that they have made access to information fairly easy. ICTs, write Morales-Gomez and Melesse, allow societies to access, produce, adapt to and apply information, thus giving them vast opportunities to facilitate the acquisition and transfer of knowledge (1998). Yet, while ICTs act as enablers of development, “the outcome depends greatly upon the larger socio-cultural and political environment within which they are introduced and applied” (Morales-Gomez and Melesse, 1998, p. n.a.). Indrajit Banerjee, Director of the Information Society Division at UNESCO speaks about the opportunities and challenges of ICTs:
Video (c) IICD
THE DISABLED
Persons with disabilities find it difficult to undertake simple tasks such as accessing a website or a phone, an electronic kiosk or “simply watching the news or following emergency public announcements” for the lack of universally designed technologies. With national ministries in charge of ICTs responsible for formulating policies and programs to ensure this, the public and private sector, disability organizations and the industry must work together hand-in-hand for the standardization of relevant ICTs and ensuring that they are made available to the disabled.
This builds a case for television news closed captioning. With television being the most popular media source for most customers—“92% of the respondents rank ‘watching TV’ as their top media source while 94% respondents consider ‘advertising on TV’ as the most influential media source to impact their buying decisions” (Deloitte Consulting, 2011)—keeping television inaccessible to the hearing disabled by not utilizing the technology of closed captioning is both a means of reinforcing social inequality as well as an economically inept policy. Professor Melinda McAdams, Knight Chair, Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process at the University if Florida explains the importance of television closed captioning for the hearing impaired in developing countries.
