Research on the Impact of the Information Society in the Global South: An Introduction to SIRCA

The age of globalisation has been defined in terms of access to modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) by some scholars. Scholarly debate about the role of ICTs as an agent of social organisation and transformation has raged on before and since, from discussions about the networked information society and consideration about the commercial potential of the technology to critiques of the systemic divides in organisation, access, use, adaptation and impact. Since these initial considerations, we find ourselves living in a world where ICTs have diffused widely to far-flung corners of the globe and are being deployed to confront some of the world’s most complex problems. Scholarly debates in domains such as the global digital divide continue, in which some argue that technologies such as mobile phones have led to the expansion of socio-economic opportunity for the developing world, to those who claim that inequalities remain, with resultant limitations on their societal impact. We focus here on notions of the impact of ICTs on international development, going beyond issues of access and use, well documented elsewhere.