Creating Technology for Social Change

Digital divide and inequality in Uzbekistan

Some parts of the world have already moved on from solving the problems of digital divide of ‘have’ and ‘have-nots’ to solving problems of digital inequality. Uzbekistan, however, is a place where both digital divide and inequality are still evident, with purposefully constructed limitations like censorship and surveillance on top of that. Any politically sensitive material about human rights and the government including news-websites outside of government control are blocked. Reporters Without Borders have listed Uzbekistan as one of the world’s internet black holes along with Burma and North Korea.

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The basic problem of internet access is still the case; in 2010 only 16.8% of Uzbek citizens were reported to be internet users. Internet access is a rarity even in the work place, suggesting that internet is still mostly seen as a privilege, rather than a “mandatory tool”. Despite the fall in price in 2011, access to internet remains unaffordable for many citizens.

I grew up in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent and our family was lucky to be within the small percent of the population owning a computer with internet access. At that point I was about ten and my digital literacy was limited to being able to create my own email box. Education at school was mostly about what we read in books which did not put much pressure to learn and develop online research skills. Sometimes we did get “research” tasks and that would mean going online, copying and pasting whatever fits the closest to the research question and submitting that for a grade, usually an A.

I would think that my personal experience with internet use at the time had to be close to the experience of many other teenagers with similar middle-class backgrounds. Most of my friends also had internet access in their houses and most of them would use it just like I did, either for entertainment like spending time in chat rooms or playing online games. Though the latter could only be possible with decent speed connection. It is still a privilege even in the biggest city of Uzbekistan; in 2011 one of the major Uzbek internet providers was offering the average connection speed of 2 Mbps. To give a sense of comparison, in the US this value has been reported to be 7.4 Mbps.

In big cities like Tashkent finding internet access even if one does not own her own computer is feasible. Numerous internet cafes offer their service for about 50 cents an hour. The survey conducted back in 2003 shows that two-thirds of surveyed Internet users from the two big Uzbek cities reported getting access at an Internet cafe.

While in central cities getting internet access is possible, the situation is very different in villages and rural areas for two reasons. Firstly, internet clubs are much less accessible there. Secondly, people in these areas mostly speak Uzbek language, though very few web-sites in the UZ domain are in Uzbek. If one looks at the top 20 popular web-sites visited by Uzbek netizens, all of them are in Russian. Being an ex-Soviet country, Uzbekistan represents a multiethnic and multilingual community. Russian language is still pretty main-stream in the big cities. In rural areas, however, few people know it and, therefore, are excluded from the digital space both on the access and on the language level. In the end, it all looks like a vicious circle: no internet access in Uzbek-speaking villages leads to small demand for publications in Uzbek online. What makes this situation especially problematic, is that it implies digital exclusion of upcoming Uzbek generation that will favour Uzbek language given the current political climate and the education they are getting.

Blogging culture has shown to be rather weak given that users “are rightly concerned about the safety of engaging in open discussions on politically sensitive topics”. In December 2011 one of the Uzbek top online forums, Arbuz.com, was blocked as a response to political tensions. The web-site offered a platform for online interaction mostly for Uzbek youth. During emergency situations and consequent main media blackouts, it served as a space for relatively open political discussions. Yet, not only the web-site was shut down, but some of the people who anonymously posted comments on Arbuz, were arrested. It would be worth noting that rather rigid “censorship and paranoia perpetuated online” have resulted in users’ self-censorship. Such environment discourages Uzbeks not only from being politically active online, but even from visiting web-sites critical of the government.