Computer-mediated communication and international development: An institutional analysis of World Bank initiatives.

This is an institutional critique of the use of computer mediated communication for development by the World Bank. Literature from and about the use of information technology at the World Bank was analyzed and used to form a picture of a major development agency\u27s policies and procedures relating to computer mediated communication in the developing world. Two elements of this picture, the issues of telecommunications privatization and competition, were enlarged in order to be scrutinized more closely. The Bank\u27s newly established program specifically geared to information for development, infoDev, was also explained in some detail. Since a truly institutional and participatory definition of development could not be found in the existing literature, such a definition was developed in this paper and formed the criteria by which World Bank initiatives were judged. The conclusions reached by this study are that the World Bank is moving in the right direction in some aspects of its programs but that it is out of touch in others. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 37-01, page: 0015. Adviser: Myles Ruggles. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1996