In 2013, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook announced the Internet.org initiative: a scheme to provide “basic internet access” to a small number of select sites such as Facebook, Wikipedia, BBC News, and the UN’s Facts for Life to mobile users in 53 developing countries free of charge. Claiming that internet access is a basic human right, Zuckerberg argues that bringing the 5 billion people worldwide without internet access into the “global knowledge economy” will encourage “worldwide prosperity” through the creation of IT-jobs and the influx of diverse ideas (2013: 2-3). Yet, within a year of implementing the project, Facebook is assaulted with strong public backlash with accusations of anti-competitive behavior, deceptive advertising, disregard …show more content…
To understand these questions, I will first explore the broader context “intermediate technologies” and the debates over the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) perspective of development, then closely analyse the details, goals, and language of Facebook’s proposal to discuss how Facebook aims to respond to these criticisms and controversies. While Facebook’s project spans over 53 countries, I will be paying special attention to the debates in India due to extensive availability of literature and quantitative data regarding the usage of communication technologies. Finally, I will conclude by discussing the question of to what extent does Internet.org (and other similar programs) act as a form of the imposition of “western knowledge” and ideals, and what role can they realistically play in …show more content…
In particular, the role of internet connectivity and social media has garnered significant academic and media interest in the past few years due to the strong growth of smartphone ownership and internet access in the developing world. The Pew Research Center, for example, reported significant global growth of smartphone ownership and internet connectivity: in higher income countries such as Turkey and Malaysia, over two-thirds of the population owns smartphones and are connected to the internet by 2015. Lower income nations such as India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, while possessing much lower rates of smartphone ownership of under 20% and rates of internet connectivity of 20-40%, sees nearly universal rates of feature phone ownership (Poushter 2016: 7, 16-17). Many attribute that the uptake in communication technologies to the advent of inexpensive “smart devices” and the global rollout of mobile internet, which provides a lower cost and decentralised method of accessing the internet, eliminating the need for fixed data lines and power hungry personal computers. The same report also