ICT, power, and developmental discourse: A critical analysis

Abstract

This paper uses critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how information and communications technology (ICT) has become deeply involved in the conception and practice of socia-economic development within so-called less-developed countries (LDCs). A recent speech on ICT by the president of the World Bank Group is examined, showing the role of the discourse surrounding such technologies in replicating and extending a markedly North American worldview into the developmental sphere. The ability of critical discourse analysis to expose the involvement of lCT in normalizing a dominant set of political and economic assumptions confirms its usefulness as a tool with which to approach the critical study of information systems. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.