ICT, Power, and Developmental Discourse: A Critical Analysis

Abstract This paper uses critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how information and communications technology (ICT) has become deeply involved in the conception and practice of socio‐economic development within so‐called less‐developed countries (LDCs). A recent speech on ICT by the president of the World Bank Group is examined, which shows the role of the discourse surrounding such technologies in replicating and extending a markedly North American worldview into the developmental sphere. The ability of critical discourse analysis to expose the involvement of ICT in normalising a dominant set of political and economic assumptions confirms its usefulness as a tool within which to approach the critical study of information systems.