Networked Cambodia?

Cambodian bloggers started to attract wider attention a few years ago. A recent commentary by Faine Greenwood, featured on the blog of one of the contributors it quotes, confirms that blogging is still (for the moment) providing a platform for expressing ideas and views that may be harder to articulate through conventional media. The drawback is still Cambodia’s very low Internet penetration (only 78,000 users according to the World Bank) – and its 78% literacy rate.

But many trends are pointing upwards. Bun Tharum quotes a figure approaching 60% for mobile phone usage among Cambodia’s population (and the ubiquity of mobile phone outlets in Cambodia would certainly seem to corroborate the growing popularity of this technology). Advertisers, he says, have also spotted the opportunity to increase the number of Internet consumers, and ads on Cambodian TV currently portray "youth hanging out at cafes with friends and using touch-screen phones to catch up on the news of the day over cups of coffee." Twitter use is increasing, and in May this year, BuddeComm noted "promising signs that the widespread introduction of wireless broadband services will see a long-term surge in growth" in the Internet sector. The use of social media networks is on the rise, although Phatry Derek Pan, a Cambodian-American blogger, cautions against automatically expecting that to translate into a politically focused “social media movement”.

Blogger Sopheap Chak argues that relatively humble mobile phone technology already provides a channel for "people who otherwise would have no voice" to pass on information and join social causes. She also acknowledges, however, that SMS message campaigns can be used for starkly nationalistic causes, as well as more progressive ones.   

Whatever its political possibilities, the mobile phone has already proved itself to be a technology that offers economic opportunity across the board. If it can chip away at some of Cambodia's inequalities, that will already be a substantial achievement.