ICT as an Engine for Community Participation: An Assessment of Uganda’s Community Media

Ict And Community Participation

ICT is the technology used in conveying, manipulating and storing of data by electronic means. It includes, but not limited to: satellite, internet, computer, and digital storage devices (Hang, 2005). In the West, where there is more advanced technology, Williams and Carpini (2004, p. 212) say that, the growth of ‘cable and satellite television, the internet and the World Wide Web, the availability of video cassette recorders and remote TV- controls’, and so on, now define what Marshal McLuhan’s 1953 article on Harold Innis (Peters, 2009, p. 16) and later in 1960 (McQuail, 2006, p. 36), called new media. In Uganda, with one in 12 people using the internet (UCC, 2012), there is a certain minority consuming media on-line especially print, as most newspapers in Uganda are online.