Digital Revolutions: New Information Technology Tools in 21st Century Politics
What effects do communication technology tools have on shaping political events and processes? Big data and mapping technologies helped to shape the international and domestic political responses to the West African Ebola epidemic and the Nepalese earthquake, improved government responsiveness in public service delivery in rich and poor countries alike, and have helped poor but resource-rich states to increase revenues from their natural resource sectors.
Hovedinnhold
These new digital tools themselves represent a technological revolution, and are at the same time revolutionizing politics in many developing countries. They promise great potential for mobilizing people, ideas, and resources in new and profound ways that could contribute to improving the welfare of millions of people. Yet their very novelty also means that little knowledge exists about the conditions under which particular types of tools have particular types of effects, and what effects they may have in the future. These are important questions to answer, given that there are high expectations for – and many unproved claims about – the power of digital technologies to, among other things, increase democracy as well as citizen participation and voice, alleviate poverty, and improve human rights.
See the entire programme and more info on CMI's web pages.
To fill this evidence gap, this project aims to assess the forms and effects of the digital revolution in a two-step process of mapping out the various technological interventions and systematically testing their political and applied impacts across a number of key issue areas. These areas are the following: humanitarian relief delivery during crisis, conflict, and disaster situations; the quality of government responsiveness, accountability, and service delivery; development aid effectiveness, including tools for monitoring and evaluation; natural resource governance; and the nature and achievements of citizen-level social movements, contentious politics, and broader social relations.
