The Role Of Information In Well-being: the Concept Of Information Well-being And Its Framework

Open Access
- Author:
- Cui, Jian
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 21, 2014
- Committee Members:
- Richard Denny Taylor, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Richard Denny Taylor, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Krishna Prasad Jayakar, Committee Member
Anne M Hoag, Committee Member
Eileen M Trauth, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Telecommunications industry
well-being
measurement
composite index - Abstract:
- The performance of the telephone/telecommunications industry has interested scholars, as well as policy-makers, for decades. Since the privatization of British Telecom and the divesture of AT&T until the late 1990s, the focus had been on the impact of telecommunications reforms, i.e., privatization, introduction of competition, liberalization and establishment of independent regulatory agencies, on the industry’s performance in terms of network coverage, affordability and accessibility of primarily voice-based telecommunications services, and the efficiency of networks. However, since the mid-1990s, the attention has been gradually but steadily drawn elsewhere. In the wake of the recognition of the digital divide and the revival of the concept of the Information Society, more efforts have been put into research on the newly emerging “information industry”, which combines the traditional telecommunications industry and various new information services. Research on measuring the Information Society has advanced slowly, on account of the insufficient amount of available data. Nonetheless, time has remedied this. In the past decade, a huge amount of data have been collected, and in order to exploit this data, index systems which are aimed to measure the Information Society have been devised by many national and international institutions, most of whose headquarters are based in Europe. These indices, to some extent, have taken advantage of the data, and have been able to produce preliminary results that countries can use to locate their relative standing in the world. However, they are hardly useful or helpful in setting measurable and reachable targets and pointing out a clear direction which future development of the industry should follow. A close examination of the current indices further reveals that leaving what is to be measured undefined and lacking a theoretical foundation and methodological rigidness has undermined the capability and value of these indices. This thesis proposes a solution to these problems. First, it evaluates the existing indices that measure the Information Society, their underlying theories and methods, and identifies their strengths and weaknesses. The thesis further compares performance measures across the network industries that share similarities with the information industry, such as the electricity and utilities industries and the public transportation industry, in the hope that these comparisons may shed light on measurement of the Information Society. Second, it proposes a concept of information well-being, elaborates on its theoretical foundation, operationalizes the concept and derives an operational framework to translate the concept into a numeric form. In this process, the thesis addresses the following shortcomings of the existing indices: a) The concept is theoretically grounded; b) it has a clear definition as to what it is to measure, its scope and applicability; c) it has a rigid methodological framework and guidelines; and d) it defines a goal towards which the development of the Information Society should be driven, and provides tools to measure the progress towards the goal. In the end, a recommendation is put forward to policy-makers, on how to use this thesis as an example of fact-based, data-driven policy-making for the future.