Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad

THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 129
Internet users in 1000
South Korea,
29,220 5%
US, 159,000
25%
Australia, 9,472
1%
Brazil, 14,300
2%
Canada, 16,110
3%
China, 94,000
15%
Rest of the
world, 39,808
6%
Japan, 57,200
9%
India, 18,481 3%
EU, 206,032
31%
Figure 5.3 Proportion of sum of Internet users, world data
Source: adapted from CIA (2005).
employment generation with broader social concerns about the environment
and labour regulations raises the need for greater research in this
area and more attention to these issues from the perspective of citizens
and workers in the South (Kabeer 2002).
For much of the world’s population, especially those living in rural
areas, ICTs can only serve as complementary tools for sectors that are of
vital importance for the alleviation of poverty. In this regard, the emphasis
on ICTs and the neglect of the agricultural sector in terms of policy
and regulation at the international level has resulted in stagnation in
food productivity in sub-Saharan Africa and growing of food insecurity
across rural South and Southeast Asia and rural expanses of much of Latin
America (ILO 2005; Shiva 2000). As the International Labour Office
World Employment Report states:
[R]ural development and the agricultural sector in many developing
countries fell victim to an era of policy neglect in the 1990s. The neglect,
moreover, has occurred both at the national policy level as well
as within the multilateral system. While the point cannot be unequivocally
made, it is perhaps no mere coincidence that the decade of rural
policy neglect of the 1990s also witnessed a pronounced slowdown in
the rate of poverty reduction in the developing world. (ILO 2005: 15)