Remapping the digital divide

Inequity in the Technopolis Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin, 2012

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have been expanding at a staggering rate over the last 10 years in our newly globalized world. It is an area where a divide has been developing - and already exists - between advanced and developing countries (an international digital divide) over an above, other existing “development” divides. Reacting promptly to the IT tidal wave – bridging digital divides - can help in narrowing social and economic inequalities and offer new hope to local wealth creation, and thus be a major factor for speeding up socio-economic development as a whole as well as in a number of specific areas including commerce, governance, health, education (identified together with environment as development imperatives at the UN Millennium Summit) as well as science and technology. Addressing national and international digital divides is a multifaceted and multi-layered task the foundation for which must be defining clear and achievable objectives, at the national and regional levels. Governments, private sector and science development organisations have parallel yet overlapping roles to fulfil in order to help developing countries to ‘leap frog’ into a position whereby they would reap maxim benefit from the current phase of the ICT revolution.

2002

Digital divide is the latest evocative term that refers to differences in access to and uses of information technology that are correlated with income, race and ethnicity, gender, age, place of residence, and other measures of socioeconomic status. According to the Department of Commerce, some people “have the most powerful computers, the best telephone service and fastest Internet service, as well as a wealth of content and training relevant to their lives.... [A]nother group of people ... don’t have access to the newest and best computers, the most reliable telephone service or the fastest or most convenient Internet services. The difference between these two groups is ... the Digital Divide.” The purpose of this essay is to provide a brief introduction to the concept of the digital divide. This essay will broadly outline the nature of the digital divide and the policy issues surrounding it, and will review the facts and research findings on three main themes: the magnitude of the...

Bridging the Digital Divide

"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."

The computer and Internet technologies have fundamentally changed the way the economy develops and the way people live in various countries. People have experienced spectacular changes in the way they learn, work, relate with others and entertain themselves in this information society within a period of less than 15 years. There is a growing realization that technology has become an irreducible component of modern life, and its presence and use has significant impact on an individuals’ ability to fully engage in society generally and more specifically in areas such as education, employment, government, civic participation, and socialization. At the same time, we have also witnessed a growing gap, a new form of divide or exclusion, gradually separating those who can derive many benefits from the new information society and those who cannot.

Jurnal Komunikasi, 2007

This paper addresses the digital divide issues based on a survey of 150 respondents comprising of governments and respondents from rural and urban sectors of selected areas as well as in-depth interviews. The study explored various government measures to ...

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 ...

2021

This paper, part of my MPhil research, introduces, defines and presents the theoretical background to the term digital divide drawing on literature and sources available at the early years of 2000. It draws on 3 analytical tools for relevant policy-making that addresses the digital divide: e-economy, e-education and e-government.The paper concludes with a brief synopsis of EU’s early 2000 political response to the challenge presented by the digital divide that follows exactly this three-fold approach.