The Digital Divide and Political Apathy: A Multivariate Logistic Regression Analysis of a Sample of Arab Opinion Index Data

المؤلفون

  • المؤلف

  • Hicham Raïq

الكلمات المفتاحية:

Digital Divide، Logistic Regression، Political Participation، Social Inequality، Internet

الملخص

This study seeks to measure the digital divide and its impact on political participation in selected Arab countries. It focuses in particular on assessing the role of demographic and socio-economic status (SES) in unequal access to the internet. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to predict political participation based on SES and internet use. Based on Arab Opinion Index data, the results of the analysis indicate that SES (gender, age, income and educational level) plays a major role in the level of Internet access, and that the purpose for which the internet is used determines the likelihood of political participation. The results also indicate that vulnerable social groups are more reluctant to participate in political activities.

المراجع

  1. Jan van Dijk, The Digital Divide (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), pp. 11-13.
  2. ITU Publications, Measuring Digital Development: Facts and Figures 2021, International Telecommunication Union (Geneva: 2021), accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3P7nwaR
  3. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3QdulJd
  4. Rasha Faek & Tarek Abd El-Galil, “The Shift to Online Education in the Arab World is Intensifying Inequality,” al-Fanar Media , 30/4/2020, accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3C9hWCf
  5. Ankita Upadhyay, “Covid-19: How Online Classes Have Widened the Digital Divide,” The Times of India , 5/7/2021, accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3bEN5lU
  6. UN, “Digital divide and open government in the Arab region,”the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (Beirut: United Nations, 2021), accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3zG8m6J
  7. ITU Publications.
  8. A. J. van Deursen & J. A. van Dijk, “The First-Level Digital Divide Shifts from Inequalities in Physical Access to Inequalities in Material Access,” New Media Soc , vol. 21, no. 2 (2019), p. 355.
  9. ACRPS, Public Opinion Measurement Program, Arab Opinion Index 2017/2018, accessed on 7/8/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3BQ3DCj
  10. Saudi Arabia was omitted due to a lack of variables regarding political participation. Source: Results of the factor analysis prepared by the researcher based on the Arab Opinion Index (2017-2018). The variable is correlated with the axis when the load factor exceeds 0.4.
  11. Norm O’Rourke & Larry Hatcher, A Step-by-Step Approach to Using SAS® for Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (Chicago: SAS Institute Inc, 2007), pp. 43-44.
  12. Several methods were used to extract the axes, including rotation, which allowed for the existence of correlation. In this way, the number of axes was determined using a criterion of eigenvalues greater than 1.
  13. O’Rourke & Hatcher, p. 22.
  14. Cronbach’s alpha is above 0.7.
  15. Joakim Ekman & Erik Amnå, “Political participation and civic engagement: Towards a new typology,” Human Affairs , vol. 22, no. 3 (2012), p. 292.
  16. Xavier Lemyre, “Jeunes, participation et engagement au Canada,”Patrimoine canadien, September 2016, p. 3, accessed on 9/10/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3Vg4BPg
  17. David Hosmer & Stanley Lemshow, Applied Logistic Regression (New Jersey: Wiley, 2013), p. 18.
  18. Hicham Raiq & Mohamed Ourya, “The extent of youth satisfaction in light of political and economic transformations after the Arab Spring: A dual-response logistic regression analysis of a sample from the Maghreb,” Arab Politics , no. 46 (2020), p. 81.
  19. Hosmer & Lemshow, p. 139.
  20. Berk Orkun Isa & Mustafa Eray Yucel, “A Theory of Political Participation,”in: Munich Personal RePEc Archive (2020), pp. 1-2, accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3Vg4BPg
  21. He lived in ancient Greece between 495 and 429 BC.
  22. Vincent Azoulay, Périclès: La démocratie athénienne à l’épreuve du grand homme (Paris: Armand Colin, 2015), p. 109.
  23. Reinhold Hedtke & Tatjana Zimenkova, Education for Civic and Political Participation: A Critical Approach (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013), p. 192.
  24. Ekman & Amnå, pp. 283-284.
  25. Monica Bala, “Civic Engagement in the Age of Online Social Networks,” Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, vol. 6, no. 1 (2014), p. 768.
  26. Marko M. Skoric, Qinfeng Zhu, Debbie Goh & Natalie Pang, “Social media and citizen engagement: A meta-analytic review,” New Media & Society, vol. 18, no. 9 (2016), p. 1822.
  27. Ekman & Amnå, p. 285.
  28. M. Hawkesworth & M. Kogan, Encyclopedia of Government and Politics , vol. 1 (London/ New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 428.
  29. Isa & Yucel, p. 1.
  30. Ekman & Amnå, p. 292.
  31. Jan W. van Deth, “A conceptual map of political participation,” Acta Politica, vol. 49, no. 3 (2014), p. 351.
  32. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 383, 392.
  33. Van Deth, p. 352.
  34. Aytekin Isman & Ozlem Canan Gungoren, “Being Digital Citizen,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, no. 106 (2013), p. 251.
  35. Darin Barney, The Network Society [Arabic], Anwar Jamaawi (trans.) (Doha: ACRPS, 2015), p. 165.
  36. Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the internet Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 98.
  37. Assia Boutaleb et al., Introduction aux mondes arabes en (r) évolution (Paris: Deboeck, 2018), p. 130.
  38. As explained in the methodology, Axis 1 denotes the level of social media use for family/friends/dating, etc. Axis 2 indicates the level of social media use with an orientation towards issues of public concern, such as obtaining political information and interacting with issues.
  39. Based on Arab Opinion Index 2017-2018 data.
  40. Jeffrey James, “The global digital divide in the internet: developed countries constructs and Third World realities,” Journal of Information Science, vol. 31, no. 2 (2016), p. 114.
  41. UN (ESCWA), Arab Digital Development Report 2019 Towards Empowering People and Ensuring Inclusiveness (Beirut: United Nations, 2019), p. 38, accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3A9CYiu
  42. Chuan-hsien Chang, “Does Internet usage inspire offline political participation? Analyzing the Taiwanese case,” Japanese Journal of Political Science, vol. 20, no. 4 (2019), p. 194.
  43. Boutaleb, p. 152.
  44. UN (ESCWA) 2019, p. 128.
  45. UN Women, Arab States, Leadership and Political Participation , accessed on 8/8/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3A8ieHM
  46. Arab Reform Initiative, field of work, women’s political participation, accessed on 6/8/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3A2SknV
  47. Nasser Yassin & Robert Hoppe, Women, Civil Society and Policy Change in the Arab World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 42-43.
  48. UN Women, Arab States.
  49. Laurence Monnoyer-Smith & Stéphanie Wojcik, “La participation politique en ligne, vers un renouvellement des problématiques?” Participations, vol. 8, no. 1 (2014), p. 11.
  50. CC McDonough, “The Effect of Ageism on the Digital Divide Among Older Adults,” Journal of Gerontology Geriatric Medicine, vol. 2, no. 008 (2016), p. 1, accessed on 13/7/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3diwRzu
  51. Julia Schuster, “Invisible feminists? Social media and young women’s political participation,” Political Science, vol. 65, no. 1 (2017).
  52. Saifuddin Ahmed & Jaeho Cho, “The internet and political (in)equality in the Arab world: A multi-country study of the relationship between Internet news use, press freedom, and protest participation,” New Media & Society, vol. 21, no. 5 (2019), pp. 1068, 1078.
  53. P. M. Napoli & J. A. Obar, “The emerging mobile internet underclass: a critique of mobile internet access,” Information Society, vol. 30, no. 5 (2014), p. 330.
  54. Mary Chayko, Superconnected: The internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life (SAGE Publications, 2017), p. 111.
  55. Alexander K. Mayer, “Does Education Increase Political Participation?” The Journal of Politics, vol. 73, no. 3 (2011), p. 644.
  56. Darin Barney et al., The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), pp. 24-25.
  57. UN (ESCWA), p. 128.
  58. Boutaleb, p. 154.
  59. United Nations (Human Rights Council), “Internet shutdowns: trends, causes, legal implications and impacts on a range of human rights (2022),”accessed on 8/11/2022, at: https://bit.ly/3QeQPtF
Cover of العدد 11, Almuntaqa

التنزيلات

PDF (مستضاف) (الإنجليزية)
HTML (الإنجليزية)

منشور

2022-05-01

إحصاءات الاستخدام

48 مشاهدة 69 تنزيل

إصدار

مجلد 5 عدد 011 (2022): العدد 11

القسم

تحليل المؤشر العربي

الرخصة

الحقوق الفكرية (c) 2022 المنتقى

Creative Commons License

هذا العمل مرخص بموجب Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.