ICT expansion and the digital divide in democratic freedoms: An analysis of the impact of ICT expansion, education and ICT filtering on democracy

In recent years, several case studies have appeared on howmobile telephones, SMS and the Internet had an impact on political activities. It has been widely argued that information and communication technology (ICT) is influencing democracy all over the world. However, few studies provide any analysis of how ICT expansion correlates with measures of democracy. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the global expansion of ICT and the level of democracy within nations. We analyze archival data on 133 countries from 1995 to 2003, which was the period-of-time of explosive ICT expansion. Some important findings of our study are: (a) there is a growing digital divide in democratic freedoms among countries; (b) in spite of rapid ICT expansion in some countries, Internet filtering is having a significant impact on democratic freedoms. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.