Freedom and 'new' media: Examining the relationship between communication technologies and democracy cross-nationally from 1946 to 2003.

摘要

This dissertation reanalyzed the national level democratic effects of radio, newspaper, and television diffusion in 40 countries around the world from 1946 to 1994. It then compared these findings to the democratic effects of Internet diffusion in 152 countries from 1994 to 2003. Finally, this dissertation extrapolated the democratic effects that the Internet might be expected to show as it continues to diffuse in the future. This research was principally conducted by using macro level cross-national time-series and panel data in a sequence of statistical techniques.;Hypothesis testing revealed that there was no absolute, universal principal or critical level of media diffusion that could be uniformly applied across all countries in order to achieve a predetermined goal of democratization. Nonetheless, as was the case with traditional media development, Internet diffusion acted as a statistically significant, meaningful predictor of more democratic regimes in many analyses. The Internet, and to a lesser extent traditional media, may therefore be considered democratic stimuli, but only as integral products of general national transformations toward increased democracy that are represented by greater guarantees of civil liberties, robust levels of social and political instability, and media development and diffusion.;The democratic potential of the Internet may in fact be inestimable, but its actual agency has been tempered thus far, as forecasting models demonstrated. Here, it was observed that the Internet was not diffused and utilized to such an extent that this communication technology was generally related to the world and specific countries becoming more democratic than they could have been expected to be statistically without the diffusion of the Internet.;Indeed, democratic growth in many countries was limited after the Internet became available and it was linked to other factors studied in this dissertation such as urbanism, income, education, and sociopolitical instability. The Internet should therefore not be considered a democratic panacea or modern mobility multiplier but rather a vital component of contemporary democratization processes.