Communication and Information

Life in the modern times provides a selection of current, invigorating opportunities and new sets of challenges when facing the distribution of recent inventions. While once kept for individual use, Information Technology (IT) such as online platforms are presently used for more critical purposes like social revolution, political impacts, and governance within the local and national levels. The use of information technology creates implications for democracy where all individuals freely interact and benefits from the integration of technology into their daily activities. The developments in IT enables the government to communicate with the citizens not only on political issues but also on agendas dealing with their daily lives (Linders 2012, 447). The government conveys information through the media and internet on matters such as employment opportunities, tax returns, and many other relevant concerns. The critical changes in Information Technology result in positive and negative impacts on democracy which occur on ethical issues in IT.

The main changes in the use of IT involve Big Data analytics that had been assisting several organizations to make proper decisions, improve productivity and improvement there insights into the consumer behavior. The use of enhanced analytics methods like text analytics, device learning, extrapolative analytics, statistics mining, and ordinary language dispensation allows the previous untouched sources of data free to access new insights leading to faster decisions. The changes in the field of business involve speed and efficiency as compared to some years back when many business firms would collect information, perform analytics and extract information used for decision making in future (Ford 2010, 58). Today several businesses detect insight for immediate and proper conclusions. The changes such as working faster and staying active help several organizations to experience a competitive edge they lacked in the previous years.
Another change is enabling citizen mobilization during advantageous political proceedings (Hosch-Dayican, Amrit, Aarts and Dassen 2016, 142). The increased use of social media by many people provides different opportunities to a good number of citizens in U.S interested in online political input. People with much political interest are able to share several political opinions on social networking services (SNS) together with their friends and relatives. They take part in interest platforms on SNS, share videos related to politics through site such as YouTube and other SNS, chart political individuals on socializing site, and circulate blogs about significant social and economic matters. According to Carlisle and Patton (2013, 886), interest in political issues is the crucial forecaster of contribution on political agendas on Twitter and Facebook. Their ideas receive support from Gil de Zúñiga, Molyneux, and Zheng (2014, 627), who back them through discovering that social media political communication is the robust predictor of online political input. Using social media by young individuals, for politics, online public investment, and partisan self-efficiency together with entire social reliance affect political sharing online. The transformation benefits political platform through communication as compared to the past years where people used to interact offline making mobilization difficult.

The changes of IT has resulted in variations in modern warfare. According to Vision (2010, 5), information dominance is the sine qua non of the anticipated military abilities. The battle-space consciousness, location inevitability for friendly and enemy forces, and actual broadcasting of information lead to the foundation of unified action. Information dominance is vital to the capability of making precision strike assets in a way that can generate the best results (Eggers 2016, 12). Communication is regarded as essential due to information gathering is met in the actual time and as weapon systems gain the skills to respond to the information. A rationalized, hugely networked information distribution and retrieval enable for proper freedom in planned combat since tactical units access timely information on the battleground. According to Mitchell (2013, 26), due to IT revolution, sensor know-hows, information dispensation, communications, and precision guidance improves speedily and are available for use by the military. The IT provide ways of freeing the combat influence source from the battleground assets and may contribute to the constant concentration of force in the coming years.

Education and Participation

Advances in IT results in several impacts on democracy. The first positive effect on freedom is the enhancement of communication among different people. IT assist in conveying information from one individual to the other who before the advances of the internet would find it hard to meet. Many people in the emerging nations, political oppositions in States without democracy, and individuals in conflict regions can be heard than in the previous years. Besides, the internet offers new channels of information enabling interpretation as democratic (Jacobs 2015, 45). Responsibility is grounded in communication together with democracy depends on passing information for the legitimacy, and effective increase in scope and measure of discussion provide ways of enlightening the processes. Therefore, communication provides a significant impact on democracy among citizens and the concerned parties.
IT improvements provide great effects on democracy through the use of internet which impacts social structure. Individuals who prefer living in a real democracy have to accomplish some conditions of becoming citizens and ethical subjects. The kind of socialization is mostly practiced in diverse institutions of education from the primary to tertiary institutions. IT has enabled e-teaching and e-learning which involves training over some distance without physically attending classes and lectures. The tutor can convey information through internet by providing all the necessary information required, and learner learns access materials through the same means. The internet and other related know-hows assist in the continuation of education in the present times (Uses of Information technology 2018, 223). Therefore, the use of internet enables improving learning to high standards.
Moreover, the current educated internet users who can access information and understand IT have the new horizon of participation. The e-citizens can take part independently or organize groups of people to handle minor issues resulting in power sharing among people. Similarly, the internet provides power to the less powerful and reduces the authority of the most powerful. The rearranging of power is at the peak of creating a higher degree of equality among the citizens.

The advances of IT is also impacts the economy. Use of internet diminishes business costs in both e-commerce and e-government. The e-citizens can contribute to democratic conclusions and acknowledgments together with efficient facts and reduced charges providing for better decisions. The intricacies of the present societies need general responsibility for entire citizens which can be assisted by the employing automated ways. IT improves globalization as an economic activity with cultural, societal, and political consequences (Baylis, Smith and Owens 2017, 77). Again, information technology assists in maintaining accountability. The use of IT provides a large volume of information which assists in tracing individual actions as compared to previous years.

On the other hand, advances of IT results into threats on democracy with the initial one involves the improper distribution of power. The use of the internet enables empowering of few individuals, but it eliminates several people. Democratic treatise may be conquered by few people while popular does find it easy to participate. Those with interest of participating in democracy through internet which requires reaching of some conditions. Connection to internet need modem, well-connected computer device, payment for technology and transmission hence limiting communication by different people.
The metaphysical side assists persons on how to perceive reality and the belief of the truth. The use of IT such as computers functions with representations of authenticity which enables interpretation into scientific formulas attributed in sequence of between 0 and 1. The use of IT mergers significant portion of the fact that can be necessary to responsibility attributions, the truth disappears limiting information. Furthermore, people’s insight into the reality of IT impacts how they interact with them and the policies. The changes in perception result from the view of people leading to anthropological side.

Economy

The use of IT brings into focus insecurity threats. Many organizations experience the problem attack of their valuable sites and loss of large volume of significant data. The practice limits democracy among the citizens which results in reduction inadequate trust among people. For example, the US National Security Agency tapped right into the servers of almost nine internet firms such as Google and Yahoo to track online communication, which was leaked by Edward Snowden (Landau 2013, 55). The leak created awareness of security focus to practice democracy among people.

The ethical issues involved in the advancement of information technology result in positive and negative rights. The fundamental positive right is right to privacy. IT enables people to collect, store, process and communicate information, the capacities of technology also make individuals weak to intrusions of their privacies (Schwartz 2017, 17). Many people can gather and analyze precise details about other people worldwide. The phishing scams, hoax email scams, hacking and privacy theft is increasing daily throughout the globe. The scams are intended to reach the information of users and use them against their will such as monetary gain. The user should protect the privacy and secrecy of the entire data. The individuals should be responsible for safeguarding password from access by other people. Therefore, people should be accountable for protecting their information from unauthorized access.
The second ethics is right to know. People using information technology should be aware of what they want from social sites. They should know the extent of using a given location or database to access information. When the advances in IT are correctly utilized with laid principles to govern individual’s access to information, it can improve democracy and people can interact with limited problems. Conveying right information through the internet and sharing with other people without conflicting them or attacking results into democracy. The right to know limit persons from accessing immoral sites such as dealing with pornography and other illegal practices.

Even though IT has positive rights in ethics, there is also contrary right such as security. The use of internet enables hackers to hack into other peoples’ computers or even system once connected to the internet (Yadron 2016, 20). The hackers can easily invade user’s computer using Internet protocol address and gather data for illegal use. Also, the increased use of internet cookies assists in collecting information when an individual access internet which exposes information technology users to the extreme risk of fraud and inconsistent interest. Several big companies and firms incorporate the use of cookies to help the identified type of product to advertise to the public. Lastly, the use of online banking assists many organizations through transferring money without difficulties. Hackers can easily disrupt the system and move the entire funds to their preferred accounts hence affecting both bank and customer. The democratic practice is likely to limited between the bank and customer leading more problems.

Conclusion

The improvements in information technology provide changes involving Big Data analytics, citizen mobilization, and changes in modern warfare. The moves give rise to positive effects on democracy like boosting of communication among persons, use of internets, present of e-citizen, and the impact on the economy. On the contrary, there are negative impacts where information technology allows improper distribution of power and problems in perceiving and belief of reality. Therefore, the advancements in IT result in several positive impacts assisting individuals in their daily lives. Many of these changes lead to different ethical issues in the use of technology creating different effects on democracy.

References

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