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concepts and orientations
This
page highlights some questions about how we conceptualise
digital divides (and development) before highlighting significant
studies.
It covers -
It
supplements the discussion
in the Metrics & Statistics guide of how we conceptualise
'divides'.
conceptualisation
The notion of a digital divide gained attention in the
1990s with recognition that some people and institutions
were not going online or were not going onto broadband.
That notion proved increasingly elastic as 'digital divide'
became a mantra to justify a range of practical initiatives,
digital pork barrelling, media headlines, advocacy documents
and industry studies.
We question the use of 'the divide' as a shorthand. In practice
it is arguably more effective to consider a range of divides
that result from different circumstances and that are most
effectively treated in different ways, rather than through
a 'one-size fits all' approach.
Those divides include information rich v information poor,
those with skill sets and big pipes versus those with few
skills, those accessing the net at home versus those reliant
on telecottages and cybercafes,
and infrastructure that has the performance characteristics
of jam tins & string.
Pippa Norris's The Digital Divide: Civic Engagement,
Information Poverty & the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge:
Cambridge Uni Press 2001) suggests that there are at least
three major divides:
- a
global divide between the developed and undeveloped worlds
-
a social divide between the information rich and the information
poor
- a
democratic divide between those who do and those who do
not use the new technologies to further political participation
There
is a similar nuanced analysis in Mark Warschauer's excellent
Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital
Divide (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) and Branko Milanovic's
Worlds Apart: Measuring International & Global Inequality
(Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2005). Themes from Warschauer's
work were highlighted in his 2002 Reconceptualizing the
Digital Divide paper
and Charles Kenny's Overselling the Web?: Development
And the Internet (Boulder: Rienner 2006).
whose world?
In the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
end of the Cold War some people have used the 'digital divide'
and dichotomies such as North/South as surrogates for us/them,
advantage and disadvantage.
Much of the literature on intenational relativities - evident
in rankings of teledensity, economic competitiveness and
other measures highlighted here
- features labels such as the Third World and Fourth World.
That labelling is problematic because it is contested and
ambiguous. The First World (aka The North) typically denotes
advanced liberal-democratic states, although some people
in those states - for example some Indigenous Australians
- may be living in Fourth World conditions. The Second World
often identified the two Communist hegemonies, with the
Third World (The South) being regions such as Africa that
were economically less advanced than First and Second World
states and were contested by those worlds. The Fourth World,
popularised in writing by figures such as Manuel Castells,
has variously been used as a label for the poorest Third
World states, for "socially powerless places",
for repressed ethnic/cultural minorities and for disadvantaged
classes such as women and children "who are not fully
represented by their nation-state/government".
Other observers have relied on categorisations such as 'information
rich' and 'information poor', a characterisation predicated
on notions that information is written and digital (dismissing
much traditional knowledge, aka TK).
Critics have commented that info rich/poor dichotomies are
teleological, with an assumption that societies are necessarily
progressing towards "knowledge-based economies".
'Information poverty' has featured in some discussions of
digital divides, with claims that information 'richness'
involves -
- access
to connectivity (affordable infrastructure for business,
government, nongovernment institutions and at home)
- a
mindset founded on universal literacy and expectations
that citizens will have ready access to print and electronic
resources (eg through libraries, schools, bookshops)
The
development industry, discussed later in this profile, has
sometimes focused on 'technology adoption' in labelling,
resulting in groupings such as -
- leaders"
- eg Australia, Japan, US, Sweden and Finland
- 'potential
leaders' - eg Greece, Latvia and Mexico
- 'dynamic
adopters' - eg Brazil, China, India and Philippines
- 'marginalised'
- eg Nepal, Rwanda, Sudan and Tuvalu
orientations
Barriers to online access include -
- set-up
and access costs
-
lack of physical access
- disinterest/confidence
or perceptions of irrelevance
-
security concerns
-
lack of skills/training
-
illiteracy
- physical
disability
Skills
differentials are highlighted in Eszter Hargittai's 2002
Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People's
Online Skills paper
, in Launching into Politics: Internet Development &
Politics in Five World Regions (Boulder: Rienner 2002)
by Marcus Franda, in The Global Information Technology
Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World
(New York: Oxford Uni Press 2002) by Geoffrey Kirkman, Peter
Cornelius, Jeffrey Sachs & Klaus Schwab, in The
digital divide: Why the "don't-wants-tos" won't
compute: Lessons from a New Zealand ICT project, a
2003 paper
by Barbara Crump & Andrea McIlroy, in 'Babel in the
international café: a respectful critique' by Sally
Mavor & Beverly Traynor in Communities and Technologies
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic 2003) and their 'Exclusion in
international online learning communities' in Electronic
Learning Communities: Current Issues and Best Practices
(Greenwich: Information Age 2003) and in Maria Bakardjieva's
Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life
(London: Sage 2005).
Literature is reviewed in Maria Trujillo-Mendoza's 2001
dissertation
The Global Digital Divide: Exploring the Relation between
Core National Computing & National Capacity & Progress
in Human Development over the past Decade, complemented
by Kenneth Hacker & Shana Mason's 2003 article 'Ethical
Gaps in studies of the Digital Divide' in 5 Ethics &
Information Technology 2 (2003).
Jorge Schement has argued
that the persistence of information technology gaps reflects
ongoing payment for information services that involve recurrent
regular decisions (eg having a regular income sufficient
to pay a monthly bill) rather than information goods such
as a television that are generally paid off in the short/medium
term. Schement suggests that could explain why poorer households
experience less rapid and consistent diffusion of services
such as the net or telephone than they did with radio and
television.
For a perspective from the left consult Herbert Schiller's
Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis
In America (London: Routledge 1996) and Information
& The Crisis Economy (New York: Oxford Uni Press
1986), William Wresch's Disconnected: Haves & Have-Nots
in the Information Age (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press
1998), Cyberimperialism?: Global Relations in the New
Electronic Frontier (New York: Praeger 2000) and Cyberghetto
or Cybertopia (New York: Praeger 1998) both edited by
Bosah Ebo. Deconstructionists can turn to Defining Away
The Digital Divide: A Content Analysis of Institutional
Influences on Popular Representations of Technology
(PDF)
by Lynette Kvasny & Duane Truex, proudly "informed by
Bourdieu's sociology of language".
There are useful essays in Public Access To The Internet
(Cambridge: MIT Press 1995), a volume edited by Brian Kahin
& James Keller as part of the Harvard Information Infrastructure
Project, in Media Use in the Information Age: Emerging
Patterns of Adoption & Consumer Use (Hillsdale:
Erlbaum 1989) edited by Jerry Salvaggio & Jennings Bryant
and in Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency & Policy
In The Information Society (London: Routledge 1998)
edited by Brian Loader. In 2001 the OECD published
a succinct report (PDF)
on Understanding The Digital Divide.
Competition In Telecommunications (Cambridge: MIT Press
2000) by Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole and Milton
Mueller's Universal Service: Interconnection, Competition
& Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System
(Cambridge: MIT Press 1996) examine universal service regimes.
Both might be read in conjunction with Eli Noam's provocative
Interconnecting The Network of Networks (Cambridge:
MIT Press 2001).
High Technology & Low-Income Communities: Prospects
For The Positive Use Of Advanced Information Technology
(Cambridge: MIT Press 1999), a collection of essays edited
by Donald Schoen, Bish Sanyal & William Mitchell, and
Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism &
Social Revolution (London: Verso 1997) edited by Jim
Davis, Thomas Hirschl & Michael Stack are other views
from the left.
There is a more iconoclastic treatment in in The Digital
Divide: Facing A Crisis or Creating A Myth (Cambridge:
MIT Press 2001) edited by Benjamin Compaine. Erik Brynjolfsson's
1995 paper on Communications Networks & the Rise
of an Information Elite: Do Computers Help the Rich get
Richer? (PDF)
is a detailed study by the eminent MIT economist.
Technicolor: Race, Technology & Everyday Life (New
York: New York Uni Press 2001) is a more upbeat collection
of essays edited by Alondra Nelson & Thuy Tu.
Manuel Castells'
The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic
Restructuring & the Urban-Regional Process (Oxford:
Blackwell 1989) highlighted the significance of divides
within cities - most people, after all, do not live in the
bush. In the US the Urban Research Initiative on information
technology and the future of the urban environment is producing
a series of excellent research reports
and maps.
Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish:
A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture
of High Tech (New York: PublicAffairs 1999) offers insights
into the technolibertarian 'let them eat cake' approach:
just throw enough PCs and broadband at any problem and it
will go away.
For enthusiastic renditions of that approach consult Wilson
Dizard's Meganet: How the Global Communications Network
Will Connect Everyone on Earth (Boulder: Westview 1997)
and George Gilder's overhyped Telecosm: How Infinite
Bandwidth Will Revolutionise Our World (New York: Free
Press 2000).
Pippa Norris's superb Digital Divide: Civic Engagement,
Information Poverty & the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge:
Cambridge Uni Press 2001) tartly notes that "Like gambling
at Rick's bar - some popular accounts are shocked - shocked
- to discover social inequalities on the Internet" and then
goes on to analyse figures and issues.
The 2002 International Energy Agency Energy & Poverty
(PDF)
study suggested that around 1.6 billion people have no access
to electricity and that 2.4 billion rely on primitive biomass
(eg straw and dried cow dung) for cooking and heating. Charles
Kenny of the World Bank notes that around 1.5 billion people
live on US$1 per day, spending roughly US$10 per year on
telecommunications where available. Only 2.2% of India's
online population has ever engaged in buying or selling
over the web. The UN claims that 1.1 billion people around
the world lack safe water to drink, 2.4 billion have no
access to water for decent sanitation and about 3 million
deaths a year are attributable to poor water supplies.
The October 2000 London Business School paper (PDF)
by Hammond, Turner & Bain on Internet Users versus
Non-Internet Users: Drivers of Internet Uptake is suggestive,
as is The Evolution of the Digital Divide: How Gaps in
Internet Access May Impact Electronic Commerce, a cogent
2000 paper
by Donna Hoffman & Thomas Novak.
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