Rausim! Digital Politics in Papua New Guinea
Sarah LoganDepartment of International Relations
ANUwww.ircircuit.com
@circt
• The Research Environment
- Limits in current scholarship
- Amanda Watson, (2011): ‘The mobile phone : the new communication drum of Papua New Guinea’ Queensland University of Technology eprints.
- Intermedia (2012), Citizen access to information in Papua New Guinea 2012
• The Media Environment
- Media dark
- Radio and mobile phones are most prevalent
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 20110
0.5
1
1.5
2
Fixed telephone lines per 100 people
source: World Bank
May-12
Jun-12Jul-1
2
Aug-12
Sep-12
Oct-12
Nov-12
Dec-12
Jan-13
Feb-13
Mar-13
Apr-13
020,00040,00060,00080,000
100,000120,000140,000160,000
Active PNG Facebook users per month, 2012 - 2013
source: socialbakers.com
2000 2005 20110
0.51
1.52
2.53
3.54
4.55
Internet users per 100 peoplesource: World Bank
2000 2005 201105
101520253035404550
Mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people
source: World Bank
internet users per 100 people
• ICT in PNG: the statistics
048
121620
Facebook users in PNGsource: socialbakers.com
• Transparency - Positive and negative effects
- Bailard (2012) A Field Experiment on the Internet's Effect in an African Election: Savvier Citizens, Disaffected Voters, or Both? Journal of Communication v62(2) 330 – 344
• Political Engagement and the Public Sphere
- Democratisation: DiMaggio et al, (2001). Social implications of the internet. Annual Review of Sociology, 27:307; Groshek (2012) The democratic effects of the internet 1994 – 2003, a cross national study of 152 countries, The International Communication Gazette 71(3) 115-136
- Fracturing: Hindman (2008) The Myth of Digital Democracy Princenton University Press; Sunstein, Cass R. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- New actors: women + diaspora
• Protest/mobilisation
- ‘Complex contagion’: Centola, Macy (2007). Complex contagion and the weakness of long ties. American Journal of Sociology, 113(3):702
- Rumour: Goldstein et al (2008) Digitally networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007 – 2008 Post-Election Crisis Berkman Center for Internet and Society
• PNG: a special case
- Media dark
- Low literacy rates
- Under-researched information culture
- Distinct forms of social capital
• ICT and the Practice of Politics in PNG
Source: Kelly et al (2008) Mapping the Persian Blogosphere, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Adamic and Glance (2005) The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: Divided they blog. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery
• The political economy of ICT in PNG- Does ICT use change the way citizens think about the state
and its capacities? - Are citizens who use ICT more or less engaged?
• Contemporary leadership in PNG- Does online influence translate into offline influence and
vice versa?- How do women use ICT in PNG?