Title: Information society of Iran in comparison to Turkey: progress and achievements

Authors: Seyedeh Zeinab Moghaddas; Masoumeh Tajafari

Addresses: Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad 0098, Iran ' Department of Knowledge and Information Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad 0098, Iran

Abstract: The formation of an information society is the driving factor behind the overall growth of countries. This study is an attempt to draw a comparison between the progress of Iran and Turkey in building an information society based on the International Communication Union Reports from 2012 to 2019. A comparative method was employed to measure the information society in Iran and Turkey. To analyse the progress of Iran and Turkey accurately, the present study was built on the statistics and rankings of Measuring Information Society Reports (MISR) from 2012 to 2017, as well as the 2018 and 2019 Measuring Digital Development Reports, which replaced MISR due to the change the Union's approach. The findings demonstrated that Iran, despite the rapid growth of its IDI index score compared to its regional competitors in 2017, and despite being presented as one of the most active countries in the field of the information society, is ranked 11th among the Southwest Asian countries, trailing Turkey which ranked 8th. Furthermore, according to the 2019 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report, Iranian users have paid less for internet access than Turkish users, and the internet speed and bandwidth available to Iranians is much less than Turkish users.

Keywords: information society; IDI; ICT development index; Iran; Turkey; ITU; International Telecommunication Union.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2022.125900

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2022 Vol.14 No.3, pp.361 - 379

Received: 25 Aug 2021
Accepted: 19 Jan 2022
Published online: 03 Oct 2022 *

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