Mapping participation in ICT4D: A meta-analytic review of development communication research

Abstract

We conducted a meta-analytic study of recent (2009 to 2020) information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) research in the field of development communication. Our aim was to explore the conceptualization of participation in the context of ICTs and globalization in contemporary scholarly discourse. We found that most studies published during this period evinced a technological deterministic discourse regarding the process of social change, privileging modernization and neoliberal modes of development. In such contexts, participation has often been conceptualized in terms of invitations to ‘access’ (first-level of participation) and ‘empowerment’ (second-level of participation) at the local level. Despite increasing concern regarding global digital inequalities, research that approaches participation in terms of claims to ‘social justice’ (third-level of participation) associated with global forces has been limited. We found, however, that research emerging from the communication and media disciplines have shown skepticism regarding the dominant trends. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions in ICT4D for scholars across disciplines.

Keywords

participation ICT ICT4D development communication globalization digital development meta-analysis participatory communication technological determinism social change

Introduction

ICTs have advanced in unprecedented ways over the past decade. They are increasingly driving and supporting community-level changes as well as local, national and global economies and international development efforts. ICTs can help Communication for Development's emphasis on horizontal communication models that aim to facilitate participation, inclusion, and empowerment (UNICEF, 2018).

As the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) notes on its website, information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) has sparked renewed interest in development communication (DevCom). As a field that integrates knowledge with practice, DevCom engages communication strategies in support of positive social change. At a time when the pragmatic and theoretical relevance of the field in an era of globalization and shrinking power of states was a matter of debate, the rapid advancement of ICTs in the 1990s and their potential for social change reinvigorated the concept of development and the centrality of media and communication strategies in the process (Ogan et al. 2009).

However, the dominant tendency of ICT4D practice and research alike has been to focus on new technology as innovation over the role of communication (Servaes, 2014). More problematic is this inclination toward ‘technology’ over ‘communication’ even when numerous studies point to the dialogic communication processes afforded by ICTs in terms of enabling community-level participatory approaches as an alternative to top-down one-size-fits-all model (Dasuki et al., 2014; Rega & Vannini, 2018; Tacchi, 2012). ICT4D researchers generally recognize its potential to facilitate democratic and participatory communication, particularly as a means to empower marginalized groups. However, few have interrogated the nature of participation in the design, implementation, and outcome of ICT4D interventions. An information systems scholar points to this disconnect when she notes, “There is a sense that ICT4D research is based primarily on Western discourse with concepts and theories developed in the West being transported to people in far way countries,” which oftentimes “fail the poor by failing to address the challenges that they face” (Qureshi, 2015, p. 512; see also Avgerou, 2008; Walsham, 2017). Detaching ICT4D research from considerations of location, meaning, and implication of participation further undermines the validity of participatory models in development. Moreover, the ‘global’ forces of neoliberal development, within which expanding scope of technological innovations claim to bring power to the people, tend to compromise participatory interventions targeted at ‘local’ level (i.e., the global-local tensions; further discussed below in ‘ICTs and participation in the global’ section).

Against this backdrop, his study was designed to assess the state of the research on ICT4D and its attention to the notion of participation over the past decade. Building on previous meta-analytic studies on DevCom (e.g., Fair, 1989; Fair & Shah, 1997; Morris, 2003; Ogan et al., 2009; Shah, 2010), we analyzed relevant scholarship published in refereed communication and media studies journals over the period of 2009 − 2020. The purpose was to examine the extent to which considerations of the global-local tensions were incorporated into notions of participation in the ICT4D research. We also sought to examine whether such studies moved beyond the modernistic technological-deterministic discourses and highlighted more contextualized and socio-cultural understanding. We first consulted the literature to develop a multi-level framework for participatory communication that served to map out the assumptions of participation in ICT4D at the global-local nexus. We then used this conceptual map to assess the state of the literature. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible directions for ICT4D research over the next decade.

Participation, ICTs, and globalization

Typology of participation: an analytic framework

The participatory paradigm has evolved since its conception, and several attempts have been made to systematize the various ‘levels’ of participation in the context of social change. In the late 1960s, Arnstein (1969, p. 217) deduced from an analysis of federal social programs in the United States three levels of participation in a ‘ladder of participation’—non-participation, tokenism, and citizen power. Non-participation refers to situations in which a group in power exercises complete authority in conducting programs, the participants in which are simply told what to do. Tokenism describes situations where participants may be heard by those who hold power without their concerns necessarily being considered. Moving up the ladder, citizen power is exercised when citizens obtain partial or complete managerial control over decision-making. Similarly, in the context of Latin American social movements, Peruzzo (1996, p. 169 − 173) offered a spectrum ranging from non-participation to controlled participation and power participation. Like Arnstein's ladder of participation, non-participation describes an authoritarian environment from which the public voice is excluded and in which obedience is the only option. In controlled participation, the scope of those who participate in decision-making expands, but those in power retain control over the processes and outcomes. Power participation refers to situations in which the people as a whole exercise full or significant control over decision-making. Gaventa’s (2018) more recent framework categorizes participatory spaces into three levels: uninvited, invited, and claimed/created. In uninvited spaces, those in power engage in little consultation with the citizens, who are ‘left behind closed doors’ (p. 101). Invited space is created through efforts to include citizens’ voices, which nevertheless remain largely constrained by the dominant powerholders. Lastly, claimed or created spaces emerge from below, rather than presented from above, as a result of public engagement.

Their distinct contexts aside, the three typologies are strikingly similar in distinguishing the levels of participation. In each case, the ‘first levels’ involve mere access to the dominant ground; the ‘second levels’ commonly refer to the status of being empowered, usually with the help of external forces or the powerful majority; the ‘third levels’ involve attainment of agency, equity and social justice from those in power. We synthesized these typologies into an analytical framework for examining the assumptions regarding participation that informed the ICT4D studies in our sample. Thus, our typology of participation distinguishes participation as access, participation as empowerment, and participation as social justice (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Typology of participation.

	Theoretical Frameworks
Level	Arnstein (1969): Ladder of participation	Peruzzo (1996): Levels of participation	Gaventa (2018): Spaces of participation	Typology adopted for this study
First level	Non-participation	Non-participation	Uninvited space	Participation as Access
Second level	Tokenism	Controlled participation	Invited space	Participation as Empowerment
Third level	Citizen power	Power participation	Claimed/created space	Participation as Social Justice

Relating participation to ICTs

ICTs can play a significant role in the process and planning of development, not least by enhancing the participatory potential. ICTs have facilitated the production and dissemination of knowledge, furthered time-space compression and made civic participation more accessible. Numerous studies suggest that ICTs extend the ‘invitation’ of marginalized communities into the existing social capital and structures, and enable citizens to ‘create’ their own spaces for participation (Archambault, 2011; Dasuki et al., 2014; Rega & Vannini, 2018). Moreover, ICTs have been a major driver of the global-national development scheme, the expectation being that ICTs can help alleviate the complex problems caused by social exclusion and inequality, given that the citizens have adequate access to ICTs and necessary skills to navigate them (Schulte, 2015).

While acknowledging the potential of ICTs, scholars have also raised concerns against the technological deterministic discourse commonly witnessed in the context of digital development (Fife & Pereira, 2016; Servaes, 2014; Unwin, 2017). Such line of argument points to the danger of emphasizing technological ‘capacity’ of ICTs over socio-cultural ‘capability’ with ICTs, warning against the uncritical acceptance of ICTs blinded by their promises. Scholars identify two essential components of technological determinism discourse, within which it regards any technological development as (1) an autonomous process to the society, and (2) as a determinant factor to social progress (Servaes, 2014). Yet, as critics argue, the success and sustainability of ICT4D initiatives remains dependent on specific socio-cultural and political contexts and requires a deep understanding of them beyond ICTs’ technological affordances (Gagliardone, 2016; Soriano, 2019). Such contextual consideration thus serves as a counter to the technological deterministic assumption of the dominant ICT4D model. It is in this sense that Pieterse (2010, p. 166) described ICT4D initiatives as “unbearably light” since most of the contemporary ICT4D projects approach to address the digital divide by focusing on the ‘digital’ rather than the ‘socio-cultural’ gap that bears ideological and structural underpinnings of the very divide.

The narratives of the digital divide have clear implications for the notion of participation within ICT4D: ‘Participation’ can be reduced to mere access, connectivity, and mobilization involving ICTs. Then again, ‘participation’ happens only when ICT infrastructures and networks are socially and contextually appropriate. These implications, though, rest more on theory than on empirical observations. Put another way, empirical evidence of the intersection of the conception of participation with various assumptions about ICTs in the era of globalization has been lacking. Next, we briefly discuss participation and ICTs situated within the context of globalization.

ICTs and participation in the global

In their study of the DevCom scholarship over the past decade, Ogan et al. (2009) found that ICT4D research infrequently addressed development in the context of globalization. The globalization context includes broader socio-political forces, in particular the global market and political economy, that can significantly influence the institutional practices of development, resource allocation, and networking potential at the local level. This approach differs from the state-centered approach to development in acknowledging that media initiatives and development decisions can be heavily influenced by the institutionalized order of global development committed to neoliberal ideology (Sparks, 2007; Wilkins & Enghel, 2013).

Ogan et al. (2009, p. 669) noted further that the infrequency with which globalization is mentioned in the DevCom literature may be partly due to the tendency of those in the field to take “an empirical social science approach and [to] seek answers to society's problems or ways to bring about social change in developing countries,” whereas research in other branches of communication studies, such as cultural studies, has more often addressed globalization in discussions of power relations, commodification, the global production of media content, and similar cultural processes. Further, they reasoned that DevCom scholars have tended to study the manifest process of individual empowerment by adopting approaches “that are conducive to a practical theory of organizational communication for community development” (Roman, 2005, as cited in Ogan et al., 2009, p. 669) rather than applying critical theories conducive to examine the socio-culturally embedded meanings and implications.

The validity of participatory communication understood along these trends then faces a dilemma. Participatory approaches to DevCom privilege the agency of the local, thus advocate for community-centered approach over exogenous models. However, overemphasis on the ‘local’ agency presents with a risk of having a myopic vision of social change. This ‘risk of localism’ (Mohan & Stokke, 2000; Tufte, 2017) includes a tendency to romanticize the local forces while neglecting global socio-economic and political structures. Thus, Mosse (2001: 32) asserted that ‘it is often the case that the “local knowledge” and “village plans” produced through participatory planning are themselves shaped by pre-existing relationships’ that are globally predominant. Pieterse (2010, pp. 169 − 175) maintained similarly that even a ‘localized’ ICT4D project can be a ‘packaged deal’ of the preeminent forces of globalization, which neatly presents ICT4D intervention as a strategic part of ICT expansion in the service of digital capitalism. In a similar vein, Unwin (2017, p. 9), in calling for reevaluation of the state of ICT4D, critically concerns the world immersing into the logic of “Development for ICTs (D4ICT) where globally, governments, private and non-profit sectors lean toward using the idea of ‘development’ not so much in promoting social change but in promoting their own ICT interests—instead of ‘ICTs for Development (ICT4D).”

Having globalization as central foci, then, principally recognizes social change efforts on the local level as intrinsically interlinked with socio-economic and political relations on a transnational level. Whether one emphasizes the macro structures of DevCom with attentions to the global development industry and profiles of neoliberal political economy (e.g. Enghel, 2015; Pieterse, 2010), the discourses of global development that serve the dominant interests (e.g. Dutta, 2011, Escobar, 1995), the asymmetries in global information flow and communication order (e.g. Frau-Meigs et al., 2012), or social change along the global networked public sphere (e.g. Volkmer, 2003), in foregrounding globalized forces, researchers engaging with theories of globalization have contributed to advancing normative discussions that orient toward social justice.

In line with this recognition, the calls for a critical approach to ICT4D research have increased in recent years. A recent special issue of Information Technology for Development called for a better understanding of the implications of ICTs for development, such as the development process beyond the provision of ICT to the Global South, the ideological nature of ICT, and the power structures in which ICT plays key roles. The editors urged “ICT4D researchers to cultivate a critical awareness and sensitivity to the globalized assumptions, discourses, power structure, possible corporate interests and ideological influences behind ICT4D projects” (Zheng et al., 2018, p. 4). As others have noted, such awareness and sensitivity is still lacking in the ICT4D literature (De’ et al., 2018).

Research approach

Responding to this call, our guiding research question explores how communication scholarship has been addressing the concerns related to ICTs we have discussed above—the counterbalancing rhetoric of participation, ICTs and globalization. Thus, we consider how articulations of ICT4D research position participation with respect to the global-local nexus. On the one hand, there is a risk of ‘going global’ while neglecting ‘the local’ amid the romanticized glare of the discourses about global networks, connectivity, and ICTs. On the other hand, there lies a risk of ‘going local’ and losing sight of ‘the global’ forces visible in terms of the political-economic and neoliberal development. Acknowledging these risks in the context of participation, we investigate assumptions about participation in discussions of the global-local nexus of ICT4D (see Figure 1). Our approach combines a meta-analysis of the relevant literature. A meta-analysis, as an effective method for “assessing the current state of knowledge, identifying directions for future research, advancing theory, and guiding policy decisions” (Guzzo et al., 1987, p. 407), provided a comprehensive review of trends in current publications. Although meta-analysis can be effective when it comes to drawing conclusions based on a large volume of findings, the shortcoming of this approach is such that it cannot provide contextualized conclusions. Therefore, to complement this overview, we combined reporting the trends in a quantitative manner with a qualitative analysis of the main themes in the field.

Figure 1.

Conceptual map of participation on the global-local nexus of ICT4D.

We analyzed a total of 107 peer-reviewed articles on the topic of ICT4D published over the past decade (2009 − 2020) that we obtained from the Communication and Mass Media Complete (CMMC) database. This database covers communication journals comprehensively, including publications in such related disciplines as communication, information technology and media studies, linguistics, rhetoric, and discourse. The database was chosen as best suited (1) to follow up on the previous meta-analysis by Ogan et al. (2009) whose sample was collected from the same database, and (2) to identify ICT4D research trends specifically within the fields of communication/media.

We performed a search of scholarly journal articles published between January 2009 and December 2020, using the keywords ‘development,’ ‘communication,’ and ‘ICT.’ Our initial search returned 546 titles, and the abstracts were examined to determine their relevance. Excluded from the results were commentaries and articles written in non-English language, and articles without access to full text. To be included in the final sample, studies had to (1) describe or discuss an ICT intervention as a communication strategy; (2) concern a country or countries designated by the World Bank as low-income, lower-middle income, or upper-middle income; and (3) target development or social change outcome(s), including economic, socio-cultural, and political. As such, studies that discuss ICTs in developing countries but whose central aim is in advancing conceptualization of, for instance, social movements, surveillance and privacy were omitted from the results. Also removed from the list were studies that examine technological innovations and digital literacy in educational pedagogy, product innovation, and studies on digitalization of ICT without detailed concern of development outcome. Upon carrying out the screening process of abstracts, 119 articles were considered relevant. Finally, the full text was assessed for eligibility. The final list of studies included in this review came to a total of 107 studies.

Analytic procedure incorporated both deductive coding and inductive thematic coding. For deductive process, we developed a coding scheme based on the categories used by three previous DevCom meta-analyses: Fair (1989), Fair & Shah (1997), and Ogan et al. (2009). The main variables used for this coding included the location of author, target region, level of focus on social change (micro, meso, macro), development paradigms (modernization, participatory, dependency, imperialism, neoliberalism), research methods, nature of research (applied, basic, critical), focus of ICTs (types of media channel), role of ICTs, references to globalization (not mentioned, appeared, discussed, main framework), and references to participation (access, empowerment, social justice).

While the coding instructions were quite clear in differentiating ‘modernization’ from ‘participatory’ paradigms, clarifications were needed to guide the coding of ‘dependency,’ ‘imperialism,’ and ‘neoliberalism’ paradigms. First, ‘dependency’ covered articles that explicitly used the term or problematized a relationship of dependency created between donor and recipient. While dependency and imperialism paradigms are often used synonymously in DevCom literature, we differentiated the two by categorizing into ‘imperialism’ those articles that specifically discussed the case in relation to ‘media or cultural’ beyond the nation-state based center-periphery analogy of the donor-recipient relation. Lastly, ‘neoliberalism’ covered articles that suggested market-oriented reformations as path to development, such as deregulation, free flow of information, and lowering economic barriers.

Based on the discussion on globalization in the previous section, our analytic category of ‘globalization’ rests on examining the extent to which an article has incorporated critical considerations of the varying global forces—such as, global political economy, discourse, information flow, network, and global governance—into their work, either in theoretical frameworks or in discussions. The detailed definitions of the remaining variables are incorporated in our reporting of the findings.

For thematic analysis, we took notes on the main arguments, assumptions, and suggestions about the role of ICTs in the development process in the articles and combined them for the open coding and to identify collaboratively (1) recurring themes associated with ICT4D and participation and (2) the conceptualization of development. The axial coding of the themes and development definition provided additional coding variables and categories, which were then recoded to generate a descriptive overview. The inter-coder reliability scores for the variables exceeded.70 for the latent codes and.80 for the manifest codes based on Krippendorff's alpha. In reporting the findings, we first present the general trends in ICT4D research, then the major themes regarding the implications of ICTs with respect to participation and globalization.

Findings

Trends

General trends. We first examined the geographic focus of the studies. The studies mostly dealt with developing countries in South and Southeast Asia (33%) or sub-Saharan Africa (28%). Other developing regions, such as Central America (3%), Central Asia (2%), and the MENA region (4%) received less attention (Figure 2). The geographic focus in this respect mirrored the authors’ geographic affiliations, but it may also suggest that the notions of the ‘Global South’ and ‘developing countries’ shared by these major journals remained narrowly confined within the select few regions. Notably, a significant portion of the articles (23%) assumed a global perspective without giving focus to a particular country or region.

Figure 2.

Primary geographic focus of the studies.

Regarding methodology, nearly two-thirds of the articles adopted empirical approaches (69.2%). We expected to find more quantitative than qualitative studies, but this was not the case; among the empirical studies, more studies took a qualitative approach (58.6%) than a quantitative approach (40.5%), with a few taking a mixed-methods approach (10.8%). The qualitative methods most frequently used were interviews/focus groups (26.2%), case studies (23.8%), discourse/textual analysis (14.3%), and ethnography (9.5%). Also, a mixed qualitative method was used in 26.2% of the qualitative studies. Most of the quantitative studies either utilized longitudinal panel data (38.9%), such as the internet connectivity rate and gross domestic product, or surveys (38.9%); there were also a few network analyses (8.7%), quantitative content analysis (2.8%), and experimental design (2.8%). A mixed quantitative method was used in 11.1% of the quantitative studies.

We found in addition that nearly half of the studies approached development from a macro-level (i.e. national infrastructure, structural consideration, and policy; 49.5%), and the rest being evenly split between micro-level (i.e. individual behavior and attitude; 25.2%) and meso-level (i.e. communities and normative change; 25.2%). The preference for macro-level studies may be attributable to the close relationship among ICTs, telecommunications policies, national internet connectivity, and economic growth.

In terms of the nature of the work described in the articles, over half involved basic research (48.6%) intended to expand knowledge and interpretation in a particular field and make predictions about the social world. The rest of the articles were either applied research intended to find solutions to real-life problems (22.4%) and critical research intended to identify unequal power dynamics (17.8%). The remaining 11.2% were uncategorizable as they resembled theoretical think piece, literature review, or commentary.

Further, our analysis identified the media channels studied by ICT4D researchers over the previous decade (not mutually exclusive). The internet (53.3%) and mobile phones/tablets (51.4%) received the most attention, followed by broadband/telecommunication (18.7%), radio (15.9%), interpersonal communication (15%), television (12.1%), social media (9.3%), and community multimedia centers (4.6%). Media and communication channels, including digital games, Internet of Things, and other technologies received limited attention (together representing 7% of the articles). Nearly a third of the articles focused on the role of a single media channel in development, while the rest (62.6%) investigated multiple media channels.

Considered diachronically, the number of ICT4D studies published annually varied over the decade (Figure 3), with noticeable spikes in 2011 and 2016 − 2017. Given the considerable time between the original research and publication of a peer-reviewed article, these spikes may be attributable to a series of technological advances and significant events in previous years that attracted global attention to ICT4D in general. We note in this context, for example, the introduction of fourth generation (4G) broadband network technology in December 2009, and of tablet computers in 2010 (e.g. Apple's iPad in January and of Samsung's Galaxy Tab in November). Our data attests to this as we observe significantly higher attention to Internet connectivity (n = 12) and mobile phones/tablets (n = 11) among 19 articles published in 2011. The spikes in 2016 and 2017 may be attributable to the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, which has raised global attention to ICT4D. Particularly, we observe that Telecommunications Policy journal released three special issues related to ICT4D across two years (2016 − 2017), whereby seven out of 27 articles published between 2016 and 2017 in our sample came from these special issues (e.g. Fife & Pereira, 2016; Jorgenson & Vu, 2016; Yeboah-Boateng, Osei-Owusu & Henten, 2017).

Figure 3.

Percentages of published articles dealing with ICT4D, 2009–2020.

Development communication paradigm. The development paradigms that we considered included modernization, participatory, dependency, imperialism, and neoliberalism. These paradigms were not coded as mutually exclusive categories, so some articles were assigned more than one code (Table 2). The coding was based on both explicit statements as well as implicit assumptions that drew on these paradigms. The modernization paradigm appeared the most frequently, in 86 studies (80.4%), followed by the participatory paradigm (43.9%). Studies that took a modernization framework tended to understand development as ‘capacity enhancement’ (65%) brought about through ‘financial/economic growth,’ ‘achieving infrastructural development,’ ‘knowledge diffusion and extension,’ ‘increasing productivity and efficiency,’ and ‘innovation and technological utilization.’ The most frequently observed definition of development among the studies that adopted a participatory paradigm was ‘capability empowerment’ (61.7%) achieved in and through ‘overcoming asymmetrical balance in power,’ ‘bottom-up, communal empowerment,’ and ‘overcoming socio-cultural barriers.’ But development definition of ‘capacity enhancement’ was also frequent in studies using the participatory paradigm (46.8%), a result suggestive of the ‘false dichotomy’ between the modernization and participatory approaches (Morris, 2003, p. 231). In fact, around 33.6% of the studies relied on both the modernization paradigm (incorporating the diffusion strategy) and the participatory paradigms. We found further that, irrespective of the paradigm used, the studies were equally likely to define development as ‘strengthening democracy’ (20.5% of the total) in terms of ‘enhancing opportunities for civic participation,’ ‘social inclusion of voices,’ and ‘democratizing digital/social sphere.’ Like those of Morris (2003) and Ogan et al. (2009), our findings indicated a trend toward the convergence of, or more precisely, the ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between the modernization and participatory paradigms.

Table 2.

Appearances and combinations of development communication paradigms.

	Appearance		Paradigm Combination
	Frequency	Percent	Modernization	Participatory	Dependency	Imperialism	Neoliberalism
Modernization	86	80.4	32 37.2%**	36 41.8%	8 9.3%	4 4.6%	25 29%
Participatory	47	43.9	36 76%	11 23.4%	5 10.6%	3 6.3%	11 23.4%
Dependency	8	7.5	8 100%	5 62.5%	0 0%	2 25%	2 25%
Imperialism	4	3.7	4 100%	3 75%	2 50%	0 0%	2 50%
Neoliberalism	26	24.3	25 96%	11 42%	2 7.6%	2 7.6%	1 3.8%
Total	171*	159.8*					N = 107

* The total number and percentage exceed 107 and 100% because multiple responses were possible for each article.

** Percentage within the ‘Frequency’ of each row paradigm. Bolded numbers indicate the frequency and percentage of each paradigm appearing in stand-alone.

Relatively small number of the studies adopted the dependency (7.5%) or imperialism (3.7%) paradigms. We attribute the relative unpopularity of these paradigms in large part to the lack of clarity regarding its application (Sparks, 2007). We found the neglect of the critical concerns associated with this approach within the studies to be disappointing considering that the past decade of globalization has resulted in further deregulation, privatization, and concentration of information and ICTs, which merit revisiting the critical lessons of the New World Information and Communication Order movements in the 1970s. Instead, we observed a new trend in terms of attention to neoliberal modes of development (24.3%). However, most of these articles integrated neoliberal perspectives into the modernization paradigm (25 of 26 articles). This result suggests that the bulk of ICT4D research approached development as top-down social transformation achieved through the expansion of markets and accumulation of capital.

Overall, these trends reflect the persistence of the modernistic conceptualization of development in the ICT4D literature, which may be explained in part with reference to the characteristics of the affiliated disciplines of the first authors. The first authors of more than half (56.8%) of the articles that made use of the modernization paradigm were working in disciplines other than communications, such as economics, business, public policy, and informatics. These observations may also help to explain the fact that the top four areas of development addressed by the studies were rural/agriculture (19%), economics (18%), education (11%), and governance (11%).

Globalization. Our analysis considered whether the studies in our sample engaged with the concept and theories of globalization in connection with ICT4D. In Ogan and colleagues’ study (2009), 81% of 211 DevCom research articles did not mention globalization. We found a much smaller percentage, 30.1%, in our sample, which may seem to indicate a significant shift in the scholarship. However, nearly half of the remaining articles (45.2%) merely mentioned ‘global’ or ‘globalization’ somewhere in the text. Thus, more than three-quarters (75.3%) of the studies in our samples failed to engage with ICT4D from the perspective of globalization. Well under a quarter (19.2%) discussed the context of globalization in detail, and globalization served as the main framework for only a handful (5.5%).

Depending on their engagement with globalization, the studies in our sample varied in their overall approach, including attention to the level of change and the nature of research employed (Table 3). For instance, studies that discussed globalization were more likely to take a macro-level approach, whereas those that did not more frequently adopted micro- or meso-level approaches. Such differences also reflected the fact that the studies that discussed globalization were less likely to make use of the participatory paradigm (33.3%) compared to the studies that did not address globalization (47.3%).

Table 3.

Research characteristics in relation to the discussion of globalization.

	Research Characteristics
	Level of Change				Nature of Research
	Micro-level	Meso-level	Macro-level	Total	Applied	Basic	Critical	Total
Globalization Discussed?
Not mentioned or merely appeared (69.2%)	25 (n) 33.8%	19 25.7%	30 40.5%	74 100%	19 29.2%	38 58.5%	8 12.3%	65 100%
Discussed or adopted as a major framework (30.8%)	2 6.1%	8 24.2%	23 69.7%	33 100%	5 16.7%	14 46.7%	11 36.7%	30 100%
Total	27 25.2%	27 25.2%	53 49.5%	107 100%	24 25.3%	52 54.7%	19 20%	95 100%

χ2 (2, N = 107) = 10.887, p <.004.

χ2 (2, N = 95) = 7.894, p <.019.

These findings confirm that many of the individual- and community-based approaches to ICT4D have been prone to the risk of localism and tended to “underplay the role of the state and transnational power holders and can, overtly or inadvertently, cement Eurocentric solutions to Third World development” (Mohan & Stokke, 2000, p.263). This is also the implication of the distribution of the nature of the research in relation to globalization: articles that did not touch on the topic were significantly less likely to take a critical approach. Specifically, only 10.9% of the articles relied on critical approaches, whereas a third of those that engaged with globalization were critical studies. These findings point to very different perspectives on the part of the researchers between studies of ICT4D that approach narrowly and those that engage with globalization.

Level of Participation. Using the typology of participation shown above (Table 1), we analyzed the discussion of the notion of participation by the authors of the studies in our sample (Table 4). Because this analysis was performed independently of the development paradigms used in the studies, we took into account the level of participation irrespective of the adoption of the participatory paradigm. Overall, 67 of the 107 articles mentioned ‘participation’ in some way and 40 did not. When participation was mentioned, the authors of nearly half (46.3%) of the 67 articles used the term merely to denote access, a little over a third (34.3%) related the term to the level of empowerment, and less than a quarter (19.4%) associated participation with the level of social justice.

Table 4.

Typology of participation: examples and distribution.

Level of Participation		Definition	Examples		Percentages
	‘Participation’ not mentioned				39.3 (40; n/a)
First level	Participation as Access	Participation merely refers to the status of ‘access.’ The meaning of participation is assigned to the act of participation itself.	‘…increased potential for individual participation in an online environment’ ‘ICT-based training materials proved to be a key participatory strategy.’		29.0 (31; 46.3)*
Second level	Participation as Empowerment	Participation occurs beyond mere access. It is conceived as a channel for individual/community ‘empowerment.’ The notion of empowerment, however, is limited to material capacity still confined within the hegemonic system/structure.	‘Empowerment processes for individuals include participation in community organization.’ ‘…strongly related to community empowerment, as it enables the community to have access to information and resources, and promotes the growth of participatory skills’		22.4 (23; 34.3)
Third level	Participation as Social Justice	Participation privileges local values and empowers beyond material capacity. Participation is conceived in relation to counter-hegemonic capabilities, as well as a challenge to structural injustices.	‘…participation and engagement of the rural poor with these facilities ICTs can only truly empower marginalized groups when the economic, social and political context supports equal access and use.’		12.1 (13; 19.4)
Total				100 (N = 107)

* a (b; c) = a: percentage of the total; b: number of articles; c: percentage within the studies that mentioned participation.

Privileging access and empowerment over social justice in our sample was even more pronounced when compared across the development paradigms. Most of those that used the modernization paradigm did not mention participation (40.9%) or merely referred to it as access (38.6%), with only a relative few mentioning the level of empowerment (13.6%) or social justice (6.8%). This pattern was also observed when the researchers adopted the neoliberalism paradigm. In comparison, studies that adopted the participatory paradigm engaged more with ‘social justice’ than did studies that adopted modernization or neoliberalism, though the portion was smaller (25%) than those that treated participation as empowerment (40.9%) or access (34.4%). The high percentage of articles that engaged with ‘empowerment’ among the studies that adopted the participatory paradigm could reflect the promising rhetoric of participation in this context. However, it also substantiates the concerns raised by development scholars that the appropriation of ‘participation’ by mainstream voices in the sphere of development has severed these notions from their radical roots (Cornwall, 2007).

Hopeful in our findings is a trend in which we observe that articles that conclusively take ‘participation’ as their empirical or major framework (n = 13) are more likely to discuss participation from a ‘social justice’ perspective (30.8%) than the articles that simply address ‘participation’ as implications to their research (n = 54), within which only 16.7% discussed participation in relation to the level of ‘social justice.’ While this may be promising, overall, our analysis indicates that recent studies of ICT4D have represented participation in ways that privilege the technical and material conditions of ‘access and empowerment’ in keeping with the dominant development discourse, over conditions of ‘social justice’ in keeping with the reflexive attempt to deconstruct the dominant discourse. We argue that as long as the predominant conceptualization of ICT4D remains as aspiring for advanced technicalities, the notion of ‘participation’ is reduced to a mere buzzword, leaving the larger issues of structural violence associated with the establishment of the boundaries and discourses of participation uncontested.

Themes

We also catalogued major themes in the ICT4D research identified mainly in the discussion and conclusions sections of the articles. Our thematic analysis involved identifying the authors’ assumptions about the role of ICTs. Beginning with three major themes drawn inductively from our notes, we report along with the results of re-quantification.

Technological optimism. The most frequently observed theme was technological optimism (56.2%). Most of the work done in DevCom over the past decade has identified ICTs as promising tools for improving socio-economic conditions and directly catalyzing positive social transformation. Notwithstanding the years of lessons cautioning against pro-innovation bias, many of the articles regarded ICTs as forms of innovative capital that increase human functional capacity, disseminate innovation and information, and facilitate knowledge exchange. ICTs, in this regard, were seen as indispensable for social change because of their potential to improve the efficiency of production, networks, labor, knowledge, and participation in various ways. One of the key notions associated with this theme was that of ICTs as digital equalizers, closing the information gap that isolates the target population from information reach. As expected, most of the articles that expressed technological optimism adopted the modernization paradigm (72.7%).

The implications for participation are quite clear. Articles that displayed technological optimism were less likely to mention ‘participation’ than articles that did not (Table 5). When participation was mentioned in these articles, the discussion was largely limited to access and to a lesser extent, empowerment. This demonstrates the limitations of techno-optimistic thinking when it comes to reflecting critically on the notion of participation in ICT4D research.

Table 5.

Level of participation by technological optimism adoption.

	Level of Participation
	Participation not mentioned	Participation as Access	Participation as Empowerment	Participation as Social Justice	Total
Techno-Optimism Theme
Adopted (54.7%)	27 (n) 46.6%*	18 31%	9 15.5%	4 6.9%	58 100%
Not adopted (45.3%)	13 27.1%	13 27.1%	14 29.2%	9 16.7%	49 100%
Total	40 37.4%	31 29%	23 21.5%	13 12.1%	107 100%

χ2 (3, N = 107) = 8.016, p <.046.

* Row percentage reflect the percentage of consequences with respect to the level of participation adding up to the total.

Mixed blessing. Another fairly frequent theme across the studies was ‘ICTs as a mixed blessing’ (38.4%). Studies in which this theme was observed did not necessarily express skepticism regarding the deployment of ICTs but tried to balance optimistic and pessimistic visions of it, acknowledging ICTs as a double-edged sword. For example, the researchers often acknowledged the potential of the technology while criticizing overly romanticized visions of digital inclusion, thereby adding weight to the arguments that ICTs offer no panacea for social problems and that information is not intrinsically beneficial while raising concerns about the myths associated with notions of ‘information,’ ‘technology,’ ‘access’ and ‘connectivity.’ The authors who showed concern about techno-centrism argued that communication interventions involving technologies and infrastructures must also provide for non-material resources, such as changes in socio-cultural norms and the reformation of elitist structures and policies. They also generally valued local and community involvement in the strategic design and implementation of development initiatives. Nevertheless, the concerns about techno-centrism did not translate into a reflexive conception of participation, as evident in more than half of the studies displaying this theme that remained below the level of ‘social justice.’

Social construction of technology (SCOT). Nearly half of the articles that adopted the mixed-blessing theme also approached technology as a social construction (25% of the total). More specifically, the authors alluded to the basic assumptions of the SCOT theory, by rejecting generally the notion of technology as autonomous and value-neutral, and instead investigating its deployment in unique social and cultural contexts. In a few cases, the concept of media ecology was adopted to emphasize the specific contexts of the design and implementation of ICT4D projects, and several studies emphasized the hidden nuances of the responses of local cultures to innovations in situ. Like those who assumed technology as a mixed blessing, authors whose work resembled the SCOT approach emphasized the incorporation of local and community perspectives into the process of development, and in general participatory, bottom-up approaches to ICTs.

However, even the studies that displayed the themes of ‘mixed blessing’ and ‘SCOT’ only rarely conceived of participation as ‘social justice,’ this being the least common among the three levels of participation. These summaries of the main themes indicate that the debate over the potential of ICTs in the process of development continued throughout the past decade. While more and more scholars began taking a reflexive approach to ICTs, most maintained modernistic and techno-deterministic perspectives to the effect of constraining theoretical and empirical exploration of the notion of participation.

Discussion

Our meta-analysis of 107 studies from 2009 to 2020 yielded a number of noteworthy findings and implications for ICT4D research. In previous meta-analysis, Shah (2010) noted that Lerner's model of media effects on national development had disappeared from the research published from 1987 to 1996 and then reappeared in the following decade. Our findings show a further increase in research on ICT and national economic growth, especially explorations of macro-level development. The past decade of communications research into ICT4D has tended to take a techno-deterministic approach, embracing technological optimism in communicating social change. This finding supports the claims of Ogan et al. (2009) and Shah (2010) that with each new technological innovation, both policy and research fall back on rhetoric celebrating the potential of technology to increase growth, productivity, and reach modernization.

In our sample, only a few studies incorporated globalization theories or addressed concerns about global structural inequalities in ICT resources. Though the studies largely moved beyond the behaviorist premises of social change toward targeting macro-level issues, they mostly remained within the national level, with far less attention being given to the connections between ICT4D and global contexts, such as privatization of information and development institutions, the rise of the global development-and-technology complex, and political economic imperatives that govern the scene of the global ICT4D. As an exception, several of the studies that considered ICTs from a media ecology perspective (Fisher, 2019; Soriano, 2019; Kivikuru, 2019) suggested that their inseparability from global politics, culture, tradition and ethnicity explained the abrupt, contradictory, and unanticipated outcomes associated with their adoption. Another research examined through the lens of the histories of multiple generations of a family explicated how a web of relations changed over time as related to shifting global political economy and local power dynamics (de Bruijn, 2014). These studies considered the diffusion of ICTs but transcended a linear understanding by highlighting multiple contextual factors along the global and local nexus that rework the practices involved.

However, we found that in general, studies were more likely to romanticize the ‘local’ aspects of ICT4D, dealing with participation at the level of material ‘access.’ The ‘risk of localism’ in the context of ICT4D thus appears as involving both (1) downplaying of global forces and (2) the general superficiality in their conceptualization of participation. The relatively small number of studies that took a critical approach to these issues may be attributable in part to the large proportion of authors from disciplines other than communication/media studies as noted by Ogan et al. (2009, pp. 661 − 662). Our findings thus suggest that authors’ disciplines play a role in shaping the theoretical frameworks used in their research. Authors in communication discipline were more likely to engage in critical approach (29%) than those who are from outside (8.5%). More specifically, scholars based in communication and media studies tended to approach modernization critically, whereas those based in, for example, agriculture, IT, and economics tended to focus on the diffusionist potential for knowledge transfer, improving efficiency, and economic growth.

Our analysis indicates that the definitions of participation and development used in the studies minimally depended on the theoretical approaches adopted by the authors. In the context of the modernization paradigm and neoliberalism, participation tends to be associated with ‘access’ and ‘empowerment’—which are often narrowly conceptualized within hegemonic structures—rather than with ‘social justice.’ Subsequently, the definition of development assumed in these paradigms leaned toward providing material capacities, rather than immaterial capabilities. Although studies situated in the participatory paradigm tended to conceptualize development more towards the latter, their conceptualization of ‘participation’ yet largely conformed to access and empowerment while maintaining the status quo.

However, a noteworthy finding is that studies that actually conduct empirical analysis of participation or have taken participation as major framework tend to take a social justice perspective. Many of these studies employed praxis-based frameworks, with a strong focus on participation as not only the means but an end to development. Community media, “developed in the community and with the community” (Granger et al., 2018), living lab approach (Baelden & Van Audenhove, 2015), and open content creation (Tacchi, 2012) are some examples that emphasized the importance of participation with what Couldry (2010) refers to as “voice” equally as much as providing capabilities.

Suggestions for future research

Our findings indicate, in the first place, the need for studies that further refine the conceptualization of participation. The typology of participation discourse in ICT4D programs developed by Singh and Flyverbom (2016) was exceptional in our sample; most of the other studies addressed participation without providing a rigorous theoretical conceptualization. Findings from our study suggest that how participation is approached is strongly determined by the discipline from which the research arises: Therefore, the notion encapsulates a diverse array of contested visions about the role of social constituents in the process of social change. A recent issue published in the International Communication Gazette, “The legacy of Paulo Freire: Contemporary reflections on participatory communication and civil society development in Brazil and beyond” (Suzina, Tufte & Jiménez-Martínez, 2020) demonstrates one such movement by communication scholars seeking to refine and to situate the notion of participation as envisioned by Freire in multiple contexts of contemporary development and social change. It contributes to refocusing the rhetoric of participation from material access and top-down imposition of engagement to principles such as autonomy and critical consciousness in ICT4D initiatives. The concern does not stop merely in words such as “participation” and “empowerment” being devalued to ‘buzzwords’ (Cornwall, 2007), but alerts us more urgently because they actually render counter-productive and even destructive practices and results on the ground (Hemer & Tufte, 2016; Rogers, 2005).

We found that discussions of participation in ICT4D over the past decade remained largely limited to the local level, even in studies critical of technological determinism. Nevertheless, since any given ICT4D program is by nature a product of political dynamics operating across multiple levels, it is necessary to account for the various global forces that enable and/or constrain opportunities of participation. We accordingly call for further research into ICT4D as a space in which the dynamics between the local and the global play out. Such research would involve combining the perspectives of diffusion, interpretation, and culture at the local level with the national and transnational agendas and interests of the actors involved. Discussions of participation should also consider macro-level interests that may both enable and constrain its meaning.

Third, our survey revealed a gap in the literature regarding the sustainability of ICT4D initiatives. Given that the broader development literature considers community participation and ownership as essential to the long-term sustainability of the development programs (Stiglitz, 2002), we were surprised to find only a small number of studies that mention sustainability. The absence of discussions on sustainability from a communications perspective (e.g. policy change, social dynamics, and accumulation of social capital) explains in part why the notion of sustainability in ICT4D has been largely limited to the context of technological infrastructure. While we did not discuss sustainability in depth here, the notion of sustainable development has gained global currency over the past decade. We do not expect the impacts of the technology to play out in a linear fashion, so there is a need to chart the long-term side-effects and social shifts relating to the sustainability of ICT4D programs. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without sustained networks of participation, and the relationship between the two should also be further explored by ICT4D scholars (Servaes, 2016).

Finally, moving beyond technological determinism also means continuing the critical exercise of defining development and placing ICT4D squarely within the context of social change. Doing so in turn means seeing ICTs as part of a larger conception of development. In this regard, Geoff Walsham, a scholar of information systems, aptly noted that “It could be that the most effective way for ICT4D researchers to achieve impact is, somewhat ironically, to play down the importance of ICTs in themselves but emphasize their role in multifaceted development approaches” (2017, p. 36). From this perspective, communications scholars continue to have an important role to play in advancing ICT4D initiatives.

This study approached ICT4D as a subfield of DevCom studies. Nevertheless, ICT4D is a widely interdisciplinary subject cutting across different fields, with each field bringing unique epistemological and methodological assumptions and approaches. Given the purpose of this study to reveal the trend in academic research in ICT4D situated within DevCom and media studies, we focused on ICT4D articles published within the journals of this field. However, the limitation of our search range means that the scholarship from other disciplinary areas (e.g. Avgerou, 2008; Harris, 2016) may not be sufficiently presented in this study. Future studies may extend the search to other disciplines for a wider scoped view about this topic of interest

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Michael Dokyum Kim

Kyung Sun Lee

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