The Impact of Access to the Internet on Citizen Involvement in Public Policy Decisions

Abstract

In its first few decades, the internet has provided a communication medium to connect businesses, governments, and individuals with each other in new ways and brought about a revolution in mass media. Governments, international organizations, and businesses have backed initiatives to make the internet widely available around the world. Much of the drive to expand internet availability has been explained through the economic benefits that connectivity provides. However, the development and use of the internet within and between populations has implications for shaping worldviews, forming new information avenues and financial power structures, and transforming the relationships between governments and their citizens. This thesis explores the interactions between increased internet availability within countries and their governments’ engagement with civil society organizations (CSOs) when crafting policy. The empirical results show that internet availability is positively correlated with government engagement to CSOs. As internet availability increases across the world, there also appears to be a positive relationship between household internet availability and increases in economic benefits and education.