Rogers E.M. and Shukla P (2001) The Role of Telecenters in Development Communication and the Digital Divide, in Journal of Development Communication: Special Issue on Telecenters 12[2]

Online: http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/commdev/documents/jdc-rogers.doc

The authors start recalling the potential of the new interactive technologies:

1. To connect disadvantaged people with societal decision-makers so that their voices may be heard in the agenda-setting process.
2. To empower people and communities to determine their own futures through developing self-efficacy and collective efficacy (Bandura, 1998).
3. To provide accurate information about social problems and their possible solutions

They define informatization as the process through which the new communication technologies are used as a means for furthering development as a nation becomes more and more an information society; information society as a society in which information workers are more numerous than such occupational categories; development as a widely participatory process of social change in a society, intended to bring about both social and economic advancement, including greater equality, freedom, and other valued qualities, for the majority of the people through their gaining greater control over their environment; and digital divide as the gap that exists between individuals or systems advantaged by the Internet and those individuals or systems relatively disadvantaged by the Internet. They claim telecentres are a useful strategy to close the digital divide, they differentiate between public telecentres and private cybercafés.

Authors claim that the diffusion of innovation theory could be a useful way to explain the rapid spread of telecentres. They recall the basic elements of diffusion theory: diffusion, innovation and the curve of adopters.