A Panel Data Study of the Effect of Information Technology and Communication on Democracy

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Assistant Prof. of Business Administration, Kharazmi University

Abstract

In recent years the impact of information and communication technologies on the growth of democracy and citizen participation, has attracted the attention of researchers. Theoretically hypothesized that the development of information and communication technologies yields development of citizen participation and democracy. However, little empirical tests have been implemented for this hypothesis. The current study uses panel data from selected countries to empirically test this hypothesis in the period 2003 to 2012. In this study, the ICT with dimensions of infrastructure of online services, e-participation and e-government considered as the independent variable and democracy considered as the dependent variable. Methodology is econometric and panel data regression analysis generalized least squares (GLS) is used to test the research hypothesis. The findings show a positive impact of technology on the development of democracy.

Keywords

References

1- Agnew, J., & Corbrige, S. (1995), Mastering space: hegemony, territory and international political economy. London: Routledge.
2- Ahmadzadeh, R. (2011), Reconceptualization culture and media. Chapar publications (in Persian)
3- Akdeniz, Y. (2007), Stocktaking on efforts to combat racism on the internet. from www.cyber-rights.org/reports/ya_un_paper_int_06.pdf‎
4- Bell, B. (2004), An Introduction to Cyberculture. London: Routledge.
5- Breusch, T., Pagan, A. (1980), The Lagrange multiplier test and its application to model speciļ¬cations in econometrics. Rev. Econ. Stud. 47 (1), 239–253.
6- Castels, M. (2010), Information age, power and identity (translated by H. Chavoshain), Tarhe no Publications (in Persian)
7- Greene, W. H. (2008), Econometric Analysis. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice–Hall.
8- Gunter, B. (2006), Advances in e-democracy: overview. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 58(5), 361-370.
9- Gunter, B. (2006), Advances in e-democracy: overview. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 58(5), 361-370.
10- Hill, M. W. (1999), The impact of information on society. London: Bouker.
11- Howard, P., Duffy, A., & Freelon, D. (2011), Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring? http://pitpi.org/index.php/2011/09/11/opening-closed-regimes-what-was-the-role-of-social-media-during-the-arab-spr
12- Jaeger, P. T. (2005), Deliberative democracy and the conceptual foundations of electronic government. Government Information Quarterly, 22, 702–719.
13- Jaeger, P. T. (2005), Deliberative democracy and the conceptual foundations of electronic government. Government Information Quarterly, 22, 702–719.
14- Jansen, B., Zhang, M., & Sobel, K. (2009), Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11), 2169-2188.
15- King, J. (2006), Democracy in the Information Age. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 65(2), 16-32.
16- Krishner, J. (2006), Globalization and national security. Routledge.
17- Maddala, G. S., and K. Lahiri. (2006), Introduction to Econometrics. 4th Ed. New York: Wiley.
18- McCullagh, D. (2003), Military worries about web leaks. CNET news: news.cnet.com/2100-1023-981057.html‎
19- Minavand, M.Gh. (2002), Feasibility study of internet performance as political sphere. Unpublished Thesis, Tarbiat Modarres University, (in Persian)
20- Mohseni, Manochehr. (2007), Sociology of information society. Didar Publication (in Persian)
21- Pesaran, M.H. (2006), Estimation and inference in large heterogeneous panel with a multifactor error structure. Econometrica 74 (4), 967–1012.
22- Pesaran, M.H., Yamagata, T. (2008), Testing slope homogeneity in large panels. J. Econ. 142 (1), 50–93.
23- Pirannejhad, A. Gholipour, A. Pourezzat, A.A. Hanfizadeh. P. (2013), Exploring the Effect of ICTs Penetration on Social Development. Information Technology Management. Vol 5. No 3: 1-24 (in Persian)
24- Reaston, W. (2011), Information technology and governance in states. In Rosenau, J, (2011), Information revolution, security and new technologies (translated By A. Tayyeb), Strategic studies research (in Persian)
25- Rhue, L., Sundararajan, A. (2012), Digital Social Visibility: How Facebook Gifts Change Our Choices. Wired (Opinion), Retrieved 12/21/2012 from http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/digital-social-visibility-how-facebookgifts-change-our-choices/                       
26- Rhue, Lauren Sundararajan, Arun. (2014), Digital access, political networks and the diffusion of democracy. Social Networks. Volume 36, January 2014, Pages 40–53
27- Rosenau, J. (2011), Information revolution, security and new technologies (translated By A. Tayyeb), Strategic studies research (in Persian)
28- Shirky, C. (2011), The Political Power of Social Media. Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change. Retrieved from Foreign Affairs: www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power
29- Sudulich, Maria. L. (2011), Can the Internet Reinvent Democracy? Irish Political Studies. Vol. 26, No. 4, 563 – 577.
30-Tumasjan, A., Sprenger, T., & Sandner, P. (2010), Predicting Elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal about Political Sentiment. Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Retrieved from http://www.aaai.org.

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics