The limits of Web–based empowerment: Integrated water resource management case studies

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the limits of Web–based empowerment of the voiceless, leveraging from five Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) case studies, and motivated by several recent Web–based empowerment success stories. For IWRM, the Web picture is of an emerging academic–trained professional community of water professionals, with close ties to national governments, but closer ties to powerful international NGOs and NGOs sponsored by western governments. Nevertheless, no Web evidence was found for the involvement of ordinary citizens in IWRM, despite this being a key theoretical goal, and no Web evidence was found of the emergence of genuine grass–roots pressure groups. A comparison with other high–profile Web–enabled issues, such as the anti–World Trade Organisation protests, indicates that the Internet can be used to help give a voice to the voiceless in many different ways, but that its use at a grassroots level is not automatic.

Web issue analysis: An integrated water resource management case study

“…Hence, the underlying trend is for very strong NGO dominance, with some educational interest (edu, ac.uk) and a little commercial support, mainly for publishing. Although there are some commercial companies, such as environmental consultancies, that provide nonpublishing input into IWRM (Thelwall, Barlow, et al, 2005), these are not evident on the Web. This finding seems to indicate that these are probably rare, given that a company that provides services for an international issue such as IWRM should naturally create a Web site to attract clients.…”

“…Clearly this approach is self‐limiting, able only to assess aspects of IWRM that are reflected online. As such, it is likely to be biased toward academic, official, and developed nation sources (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000; Vaughan & Thelwall, 2004) and away from certain key types of activities, such as communications to and from affected peoples in developing nations (Thelwall, Barlow, et al, 2005). Nevertheless, an advantage is that widespread international coverage may be obtained without dependence on the cooperation of stakeholders and interest groups.…”

“…This overview can help stakeholders such as the UN to decide on future policy directions and can help NGOs involved in individual projects to set their work in a contemporary international context. One previous qualitative study has given a Web‐based IWRM perspective on a small scale; its main finding has been that traditionally disenfranchised groups, such as local communities in developing nations, appear to be absent from the Web (Thelwall, Barlow, & Vann, 2005).…”