Theorizing Digital Divides

The Internet has become a global community for those that are able to access it and utilize it effectively. Those individuals who are not among those that fall into that category are considered to be in a "gap" known as the digital divide. The digital divide mimics structural inequality that is found in traditional systems that result in social inequality. Individuals who fall into this divide are not engaged in the same social experience as those who are more privileged. The lessened engagement promotes the continuation of inequality in other spheres such as social status and access to social resources. The ubiquity of the Internet blinds the casual observer of the existence of the digital divide.

2016

This is a review of the edited volume The Digital Divide: The Internet and Social Inequality in International Perspective, edited by Massimo Ragnedda and Glen W. Muschert. The book examines the digital divide via a sociological lens. The book tries to combine studies on the digital divide with sociological traditions to better understand social stratification. The book includes research on the digital divide conducted by many sociologists from around the world. Routledge initially released the book in 2013. This book defines "the digital divide" as unequal access and utility of internet communications technologies and discusses how it has the potential to replicate existing social inequalities as well as create new forms of stratification. It is based on classical sociological theories of inequality as well as empirical evidence. Two chapters on theories of the digital divide are reviewed here. Bridgette Wessels integrates the study of digital divides with the sociology of stratification from the founding fathers of sociology, who grappled with the revolutionary changes of industrialisation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the chapter "The reproduction and reconfiguration of inequality: Differentiation and class, status, and power in the dynamics of digital divides." Jan van Dijk outlines how four forms of access to digital media are distributed among persons with varied social positions and/or personal qualities in his chapter "A Theory of the Digital Divide.".

Since the early years of the personal computer, when computing began to diffuse to the general public, social researchers have focused on the (non)use of information and communication technologies in the household and the impact of the resulting digital divides on social and economic inequalities. The Internet’s diffusion led this work to become an increasingly central focus of research, but not following a sustained trajectory of attention. This study tracks the questions used to operationalise digital divides as a heretofore unexplored history that throws light on the course of social research – illuminating problems that are masked by traditional studies that follow the responses to these questions, but not the questions. By focusing on surveys of Internet use, analysing questionnaires from the USA, Britain, Hungary and South Africa reaching back to 1997, we examine how survey research questions on Internet (non)use have evolved. Study of the changing operational definitions of Internet use across time and space provides a formerly unexamined perspective on the ebb and flow of academic interest in digital divides, the changing meaning of that term and the relationship of social research to technology and policy change.

This article critically reviews well-established and recent trends in digital divides literature and research, bringing up new elements of divides and the related research and making recommendations about future research. First, it disentangles some aspects of the puzzling nature and ongoing importance of digital divides. It then discusses how the concept of digital divides has evolved over the last two decades and how research literature has examined it in the same period on the basis of different attempts at contextualisation. The article brings together theoretical and empirical insights and suggests that digital divides be revisited so as to illustrate the need for less linear and more properly contextualised approaches to the concept and phenomenon of digital divides where technology, society and politics will be jointed taken into consideration to explain divides. It specifically proposes that digital divides and their research be revisited so as to emphasise the critical role of socio-cultural and decision-making dynamics in structuring the adoption of ICT in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Thus, it argues that the web of cultural traits in a society, with their own gaps and disparities, as well as policy and regulation dynamics, are in a constant dialogue with technology, together influencing digital divides and entailing implications for other forms of divisions in society.

2016

In the early days of the Internet, researchers across various fields and disciplines focused on the phenomenon of digital divides and digital inequalities, and this area is reviving as a focus of research. However, with changing proportions of Internet users and non-users and the perception from the Internet shifting from being a new innovation to something that the majority of citizens in North America and Western Europe take for granted come changing foci of investigation and changing questions. In this paper, we will investigate the history of digital divides and inequalities in the United States, with a case study of an ongoing survey of the State of Michigan. Using data sets reaching back to 1997, this paper examines how the very definition and severity of digital divides have evolved over the last twenty years in Michigan and in the US as a whole. The observed changes in the proportion of users and non-users as well as the frequency of use and the way we inquire about digital ...

2009

"This chapter explores the global dimension of the Digital Divide. It frames the concept and maps the status and the causes of the phenomenon today. The first part investigates how the Digital Divide can be measured, framing the question and some of the trends foreseen by scholars on the phenomenon. The second part provides the current status of the Digital Divide, mapping the distribution of the usage of the Internet worldwide with some national indicators and measuring how economic factors cause some of the digital inequalities. The chapter then maps the worldwide unequal distribution of some of the infrastructure of the Internet. By comparing the different measures of the Digital Divide, the chapter finally provides some conclusions on the expectations regarding the trend of the phenomenon."

After a review of the claims concerning different orders of 'digital divide' an examination is made of some of the presuppositions of the actions intended to overcome the so called 'digital gap', ranging from the provision of equipment and software for lower acquisitive power groups to the widest scale policies formulated in terms of the 'promotion of citizenship'. It is shown that even those actions that claim to be the most democratic and inclusive are based upon a highly closed set of beliefs and are potential sources of exclusion. To overcome this impasse, additional actions of 'digital inclusion' are suggested directed toward, not the minority groups, but just that elite which is digitally included.

Information Technology for Development, 2014