Philip Howard provides a commentary to his article published in Information, Communication & Society where he examines the leap-frog hypothesis of developing countries becoming information societies. He contends that there is little evidence to support this view and that policies such as privatization, regulatory separation or market liberalization have been less important for the few successes than economic prosperity.

Howard, P.N. (2007) Testing the leap-frog hypothesis: the impact of existing infrastructure and telecommunications policy on the global digital divide. Information, Communication & Society 10:133-157.

This event is part of a series of webcasts linked to the Information,
Communication & Society (iCS) Journal.

About the speakers

  • Professor Philip Howard

    Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

  • Philip Howard

    Assistant Professor, Communication Department, University of Washington

    Philip N. Howard (BA Toronto, MSc London School of Economics, PhD Northwestern) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. His current research and teaching interests include the role of new information technologies in the political communication systems of advanced democracies, and the role of new information technologies in the social development of poor countries. He is the author of ‘New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen’ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), about how information technology is by political elites to structure public opinion and political culture in the United States. This book was awarded the 2007 CITASA Best Book prize from the American Sociological Association and the 2008 Best Book prize from the International Communication Association. He has edited ‘Society Online: The Internet in Context’ (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004, with Steve Jones) and the ‘Handbook of Internet Politics’ (London: Routledge, 2008, with Andrew Chadwick).