Culture and New Media

Masudul Biswas

The discussions on various aspects of digital divide and elites’ control of the Internet content made me frustrated about new media. But applications of Action Research (AR) approach, use of the Internet for political empowerment and successes of e-government programs have again made me optimistic.

In the perspective of race, class and gender issues, the AR approach is important as it includes “disenfranchised users.” Bharat Mehra argues that the approach can help the marginalized users to change their disadvantaged life experiences and “better fit cyberculture to their real life needs and expectations” (p. 205). In this approach, professional action researchers work in collaboration with an organization or community for addressing any problem. This is not fully a top-down approach. It is an “interpretative inquiry” that allows horizontal communication. Mehra explains, “All stakeholders involve themselves in the collaboration to define the problems to be examined, learn and execute social research techniques, take actions, and interpret the results of the actions based on what they have learned” (p. 207). Thus, AR considers the expertise and knowledge of local participants. It involves those for whom the development is meant for. A collaborative partnership between faculty and students of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and neighborhood volunteers helped to develop online resources for a local library, Paseo Boricua Community Library.

AR can also develop situated and practical applications that are meaningful to the community. The goal of AR approach is to match the Internet services to local needs and expectations of community members. For example, the small digital library project in Urbana-Champaign developed culturally relevant cyber content through participation and feedback from local community. The goal of the project was to provide useful business information to the disadvantageous business community and low-income residents. The project was helpful as it addressed small business needs of the disadvantageous business community and low-income residents in Urbana-Champaign.

As Shanthi Kalathil discusses, the Internet has started to promote horizontal communication between the government and citizens, and has also started to “stamp out” corruption in some Asian countries. The Internet is not only providing services to the citizens by making government services and information online, but also helping to empower community. E-government program is an ideal step to make the establishment “more citizen-centered” through technology. E-government goes hand in hand with pro-transparency regulation. Democratic countries like the Philippines, India and South Korea have effectively introduced e-government program. For bringing transparency in the activities of the middle-level government managers, South Korean authorities introduced an online monitoring system, the Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications, to track the service delivery performance. India has implemented several e-government projects for increasing transparency and promoting government accountability. The state of Andhra Pradesh developed an online program through which citizens could efficiently complete land registration processes. Such system saved the people of that state from institutional “extortion.”
Though the adoption of the Internet in the structure of governance can ensure transparency, it depends on political will. But political will varies country to country. Some democratic countries in Asia have already demonstrated efforts to ensure transparency, accountability and people’s participation through online, while most other countries of the region have limited e-government programs to information and online services. A World Bank-funded study identified three phases of e-government – publishing phase, interactive phase and transaction phase. Interactive phase is important from the empowerment perspective as it allows the participation of citizens. In Asia, most governments have not adopted the interaction culture in e-government. Authoritarian countries like Burma, North Korea, and Vietnam and “semi-authoritarian” Singapore prefer to use e-government for service purposes but not for serving democratic goals. For its capability to deliver integrated services through a web site, Singapore’s “eCitizen” project is a “standout model” of e-government for both developed and developing countries. That is why successful e-government does not necessarily refer to more transparency, accountability and public participation in government.

New media can politically empower and agitate the citizens. Cell phone text messaging initiated the resignation of Philippine president Joseph Estrada in 2000. Online Korean news sites allowed ordinary citizens to play the role of journalists in creating awareness among the Internet users for political change. E-government programs are also helping to facilitate “decentralized, participatory decision-making within the policy apparatus.” But we cannot ignore media access problem in developing and poor countries. We have the successful examples of AR approach in cyber applications for improving the conditions of disadvantageous and low-income communities in Urbana Chmapaign. In similar fashion, local advocacy groups and foreign development agencies, active in developing countries, can apply AR approach at the local-level e-government development in culturally-meaningful way.

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