This year’s conference theme is “Empowerment and Impairment in the Global Digital
Age”. The advancement of digital information technologies, with the Internet as
its catalyst, has been known to accelerate the pace of global integration. McLuhan
believed that the technological force will eventually create ‘a global village’. Other
scholar claimed that the development of communication technologies has driven
the industrial society towards the so-called ‘information society’, where opportunities
and power belong to those having access to information. Further, it has also
been argued that the development of digital information technologies has led our
society to the post-truth era where facts, myths and lies collide.
These developments demand our critical attention to uncover: how has digital
information technologies actually altered the struggle of power in various societies?
How has the technological force facilitated the emergence of a new source of
power? Who have been actually benefited? And Who have been disadvantaged?