Measuring Social “Informatization”: A Factor Analytic Approach*

Some scholars have argued that we are witnessing a new social revolution—social “informatization”—that is comparable in scope and impact to that of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Others have argued that it is a much more modest phase in the ongoing development of communication and information-processing technology. While there are a number of reasons for disagreement about what exactly “informatization” is, and what its impact will be, two are paramount: (1) conceptual imprecision, and (2) issues of measurement. Using factor analysis, this study aims to clarify its conceptualization, and, then, rather than focusing on a single dimension (e.g., technological or economic), it will develop a comprehensive multiple-indicator measure that captures the economic, technological, and size (stock) dimensions of social informatization. We find that this measure of social informatization strongly correlates with the general level of socioeconomic development. This result implies that social informatization may be a more continuous and cumulative process than a disjunctive or discontinuous “revolution.” Social change has been and will remain one of the perennial topics of study for sociologists, as well as other social scientists. It is not an overstatement to say that sociology as an independent discipline emerged in large part from study of the changes that swept through European societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The drastic changes and the social instability, which the Industrial Revolution had brought into being, overwhelmed contemporary scholars, and made them diligent in seeking laws of social change and development. For instance, Auguste Comte specified overcoming this instability as the purpose of sociology, which he dubbed “the queen of the sciences” (Marshall 1994). It is often said that we are witnessing a new social revolution, perhaps even comparable to the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. The essential aspect of the current social change is what we choose to call “social informatization.” Social informatization can be defined as the process by which the social capacity to generate, process, and transmit information increases. We prefer the term “social informatization” to “information society,” in part because the latter implies a dichotomy of societies as being either informational or noninformational. For this dichotomy to work, one would be able to identify a specific threshold, or Rubicon which objectively marks the dividing line, and this appears neither possible nor desirable. Rather, we agree with Webster (1994:17) when he states that “quantitative measures cannot of themselves