In the digital disconnect, McChesney describes the digital age in the contemporary society in two in the perception of the two kinds of people. He terms those who calls for digital technologies to advance global democracy and nurture innovations worldwide as celebrants. Contrary to the celebrants are the skeptics who worry about the changes that are brought about by the technology. The skeptic’s argument is that the technology is recreating to think in a particular way hindering their creativity or lowering the level of their intelligence. According to him, the two outlooks are flawed since they both do not deal with matters of political economy to understand how the existing capitalism suppresses the possibility of freedom and democracy in this digital age. On the question of whether capitalism equals democracy? There is a perspective that capitalism is the regulator in many areas of the economy and that systems with financial returns work. The persistence inequality in the digital democracy results in manipulative advertising monopolized markets and inequality.
In the modern global economy, the information and communication technology is the primary driver not just for the economic growth but also in the improving the standards of living. It is clear that IT will continue to drive growth in the days to come (Topol, 2012). Despite these facts, some policy makers are yet to appreciate this reality and that has led them to playing catch up in drafting policies that would govern the IT industry.
Although the benefits of new technologies are more often exaggerated, they end up exceeding the initial expectation in the long term. It is the same scenario that occurred with the digital revolution in the Middle East. The digital democracy is fulfilling its initial expectations with its adoption rates exceeding the forecast at the start of the last decade. The IT integration into all aspects of human interaction is creating a digital economy which can generate growth.
The digital revolutions role in economic growth is not just transaction that are conducted over the internet. It represents persistent use of smart hardware’s, applications software and telecommunication systems. These helps on improving the quality of service and automating some tasks to save time and resources. Governments have adopted the digital revolution, individuals, all types of organization including learning institutions and all manner of businesses (Ahmed, 2013). Over time, it has evolved to have tools that make it easy to create, profile, transmit, retrieve, manipulate and store data in a digital form. The computers continue to evolve and improve on storage capacities, their computing power and having better displays. They are also getting more user friendly and cheaper to acquire accelerating the rate of their adoption by individuals.
In the health sector, there is now telemedicine that has enhanced the quality of life by facilitating better diagnosis of the ailments as well as consulting among the medical health practitioners without having to travel physically.
Over the past decade, the digital communications and information systems have spread all over the world. These modern communication systems have brought with them fundamental change in all spheres of the human life (Vittal, 2013, P.5). They have changed the dynamics in economic, social and the political dimensions.
In marketing, digital advertisement has also recorded significant growth. The main reason is that people spend much time glued to their computers or smart phones, browsing on the internet. To the marketers, every screen is an opportunity to introduce products to the eligible customers and also a quick means to get feedback on the products from the existing customers. Technology dynamism has made it possible to profile the targeted audience for a particular advert based on their browsing history, personal information from their accounts in the social sites. In the old ways of advertising, marketers used to place advertisements in the television before, during and after the program. They could also have them advertised on radios or specific print medium while targeting a particular audience. This cannot be compared to the potential of the digital adverts which can be tailored to a small group of individuals. The online databanks have made it possible to profile audience based on location, their social class, age and gender with high precision.
The digital democracy has also revolutionized financial sector in many ways. Unlike during the pre-digital era, people are now able to access their money through internet banking.They can shop online in stores that are as far as in other continents and have those good delivered to their doors (Burkell & Fortier, 2013, October). This has opened up the local businesses for competition and also to the other potential customers who have no chance of ever appearing physically to do the shopping in a particular store.
In addition to the economic benefits, the digital revolution has come with e-democracy that is also referred to as digital democracy. It is a new concept that is used to describe the modern engagement in the political processes. Digital democracy involves the use of latest technological innovations in communications and information technologies to overcome the various challenges that have been major hindrances in mass communications.
Reaching out to the offline population and getting as many people as possible online to participate in matters of governance is descriptive of the new engagements between the citizenry and their rulers. At the core of the e-democracy, concept is the willingness of the governments to share information with the people by adopting open access policies to make information accessible and readily available.
The important aspect of technology in today’s political arena is not necessarily to pass the message to the citizens but rather it facilitates a two-way communication. In return, the citizens can critic the government and let their views known to their rulers in real time.
Although the digital culture is understood to be a modern society that thrives in cyberspace and ICT structures that are created by the government to serve all citizens, it is different in Arab world. In the Middle East, there exists an inherently different kind of the digital society. This form of society in the Middle East has been created by the citizens to advocate good governance, human rights, involvement in the decision-making process.
Although the digital technology has facilitated the political reforms in different civilizations, it is still hard to talk about freedom of expression in cyberspace within the Middle East context. This is because the calling for a change in the Middle East is being driven by the youth, the financially well-off, writers, journalist as well as the ICT literates. However, as for the have-nots, and the poor citizenry have no voice in the change process.
In learning institutions, the digital revolution has brought flexibility as well as affordability. It had made it possible for the centers of higher learning to have online programs that do not require students to attend the classes physically (Andreotti & Pashby,2013,p .430). This has increased their capacity of the student that they can handle because all that is required is a reliable internet and a computer for a person to attend classes from anyplace. The minimal resources that are required to set up the virtual classes has also led to the reduction of the tuition fees thus making many more people to afford the education.
Having been invented in the US and Europe where freedom of speech and sharing of government information, are constitutional rights, adoption of internet in the middle east has caused a stir in the ruling dynasties. With just half of the population using the internet as of 2013, the level of interaction among the citizenry has improved. In essence, people have found the internet to be a reliable means to challenge the Islamic governments not only on the cultural matters, but also on the way they are governed.
It is the digital revolution that has facilitated the people’s revolutions that have ousted the long-serving dictators like Ben Ali, Gadhafi and Mubarak leaving a trail of change across the whole region. It is obvious that the Islamic teachings play significant roles in the Middle East. To outsiders, the union between the state and the religion appears to be retrogressive since it reminds them of the dark ages. For the people in Middle East, Islam is not just a religion, but also their way of life that has been passed to them since the days of the prophet Mohammed. It is thus important to differentiate between the state and the religion in order to understand the two.
The way of people’s life is by far shaped by the laws of the land and the legislation serves to give more direction on the ever arising challenges that might not be covered by the existing laws. An example of the harsh laws is like the laws in Saudi Arabia that prohibits women from driving cars. This is unlike the teachings in Sunnah, where the wives of Prophet Muhammad used to drive their camels that were equivalent of the cars at that time. It is clear that Islam as a religion does not prohibit women from driving cars, but rather there is no fairness in interpretation and application of the laws. Since the Islamic scholars who interpret the laws in Quran are all men, they creates the rules in favor of men and leaves no room for the women to question their judgments.
In Islamic states, going against the law and the government is a criminal offense, and this makes it hard for the people to air their view against oppressive regimes. They do not have the freedom to protests against the rulers since that can carry serious consequences from the system. It is for that reason that people devised ways of coming together through safe mediums that were devoid of the controls of their governments.
Through internet people were able to meet and deliberate on their plight and their wishes in social network forums, digital media among other types of communications. The ICT have empowered citizens of different Islamic states to bring down dictatorship governments.
Social media have also changed the perception of people concerning their options. Arab spring revolution has been characterized by a network of young people who share common aspirations. The decentralized nature of social media became a challenge to the authoritarian regimes which used to own and control media (Herrera, 2014). The dynamic and rapid pace of organizing protest in Facebook and Twitter caught the authorities unawares.
These new tools of communication provided reliable sources of information that the regimes could not censor and hence activists trusted the information that was being relayed in these platforms. The updates of what was happening were being transmitted in real time, and this helped in shaping individual decisions for people to join protests and the planning of protest logistics.
As the rest of the world was using the internet to enhance trade and open up the global market, the oppressed communities found the cyberspace more convenient in organizing demonstration to vent their anger against dictators. The power of ICT kept on increasing as the internet penetration increased (Byman, 2014, P.84). Although the internet is available in the Middle East, it is not as fast as the one that is found in western countries and it is expensive also.
Even with poor access and high cost of acquiring internet, its adoption and usage in the Middle East has been phenomenal with many young people accessing the cyberspace and connecting to the rest of the world. The introduction of the Facebook in 2004 caused a significant boost to the penetration of internet in the Middle East and later other social sites like blogs, YouTube and twitter also contributed to the online activism.
As of last year millions of Arabic language blogs were regularly updated with the leading countries being Egypt and Iran (Herrera, 2014). The bloggers role in these and other Middle Eastern countries is to express the concerns of the people concerning their countries political status and in essence inform the rest of the world the real situation on the ground.
Ben Ali’s case was just, but the first to face the wrath of the people, Egypt followed suit and staged a coup against Mubarak and later Libyan’s killed Gaddafi. All this was made possible by the use of internet as a medium of organizing the mass protest.
Although there are small cases of internet being used in a wrong way by either the fraudsters to still personal properties; pirates in violation the copyright laws or terrorist by spreading their ideologies to the masses. It has empowered the people of Middle East. Those people whose voices has been silenced for long have now found their voices and the rulers in the Middle East are aware of people’s power.
Other than removing dictators from power, the citizens are now able to share the day today's oppression by either culture or religious norms with the world at large in real time. This has made the oppressors more cautious of their actions as the oppressed just needs to upload videos in the social media, and they will get support from the rest of the world.
Even countries like Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia that has not seen the change of the government, the digital media have been used by the people in those countries as a tool for freedom demonstrations. This indicates that almost all the Middle East countries have been affected by the internet, and may be digital democracy is what will bring an end to the legacy of caliphate in the Middle East.
The Pakistani and Afghan’s girls being offered a chance to get education (Fox, 2010). The condemnation of the Iran’s judicial system for giving a death sentence to a woman who killed a man in defense of a rape. There has also been a level of acceptance for women in leadership, and an example is the new Member of Parliament in Afghanistan who is a lady. The various level of economic and political participation of women in countries like Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia among other Muslim countries has been achieved through ICT means.
With the continued improvements of the ICT services in the region, the gains will continue to increase, and the democratic space widen. It might not be easy to turn all the dictatorial governments to democracies but slowly but indeed it will be a matter of time before the voiceless embrace technology and determine their future. There is no end to the transfer of power from the elite to the hands of the masses. Traditions will continue to suffer changes and the major losers in this battle is the people in power. Their grip in power is no longer guaranteed with their old order of divide and rule (Ray, 2011). They can only control the physical gathering of activist, but they have no control of the digital voices that have a larger audience. Some governments are have tried censorship to the online activities without success since technology is always way ahead of them.
The digital democracy has transformed the way of doing things and has given mankind a chance to experiment on more challenging tasks that can better their living standard. The way forward is to embrace the digital revolution, deal with its challenges and share its benefit for a better world.
Reference
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