The Digital Divide

Problems with the concept of ‘We Media’

• On the 12 July 2010, David Cameron launched the Manifesto for a Networked Nation, pledging to get online by 2012 everyone in the UK who is not yet online. The report estimated that around 10 million people in the UK did not have access to the internet, or have never used it, and that there are enormous benefits to citizens from internet use.

Estimate to the nearest 5%(i)What percentage of people in the UK are still offline?

(ii)What percentage of Londoners do you think are online?

(iii) What percentage of Scottish and people in the Northeast of England are online?

Who is Excluded?

• For each of the following graphs, identify the social group/type of person being excluded.

Kofi Annan (2003)• A ‘digital divide’ threatens to exacerbate already-

wide gaps between rich and poor, within and among countries. The stakes are high indeed. Timely access to news and information can promote trade, education, employment, health and wealth. One of the hallmarks of the information society – openness – is a crucial ingredient of democracy and good governance. Information and knowledge are also at the heart of efforts to strengthen tolerance, mutual understanding and respect for diversity.

Why?

• What can explain these statistics in terms of the digital divide and why are these statistics especially problematic in light of the claims made by believers of ‘We Media’ and its possibilities?

Access

• It is however becoming increasingly rare to find people who are genuinely unable to access the internet if they wished to- as an example, most regional libraries now provide free internet use.

Moving from Digital Divide to Digital Inclusion

• Sonia Livingstone from the London School of Economics has long researched the notion of what is traditionally known as the digital divide.

• Her research has become increasingly less focused simply on access and increasingly more interested in use (a much trickier concept incorporating social and economic factors)

Mark Warschauer (2003)

• A framework of technology for social inclusion allows us to re-orient the focus from that of gaps to be overcome by provision of equipment to that of social development to be enhanced through the effective integration of ICT into communities and institutions. This kind of integration can only be achieved by attention to the wide range of physical, digital, human, and social resources that meaningful access to ICT entails.

Livingstone & Helsper (2007)• ‘The research task has thus shifted to that of capturing

the range and quality of use, transcending simple binaries of access/no-access or use/non-use and tracking shifting ‘degrees of marginality’ in digital inclusion and exclusion’. For example, skills in searching for information.

• Research looked specifically at the issue of digital inclusion amongst children (9-19) and aimed to answer 3 questions.

Livingstone & Helsper (2007)

1. Is there a digital divide among children and young people? If so, what role do age, gender and socioeconomic status (SES) play in access to and use of the internet?

2. Who makes little or no use of the internet and why?

3. Are there gradations in quality of internet use among children and young people and, if so, how can these be explained?

Method

• Livingstone and Helsper selectively interviewed more than 2,000 young people to gauge internet habits, not just access but the breadth of knowledge.

Conclusions

• Non-users and Occasional users are more likely to be working class and have access issues- even if they have a computer they often do not have broadband and are less likely to have computers in their room

• Daily users come more from middle class homes.

Conclusions (2)

• Providing home access can alleviate but not overcome the relative disadvantage of coming from a low socio-economic status household in terms of the breadth of internet use

Conclusion (3)

• Created a gradation of internet use:- Step 1 centres on information seeking (16%)- Step 2 adds in games and email (29%)- Step 3 adds in instant messaging and

downloading music (27%)- Step 4 adds in a wide range of interactive and

creative uses (27%)

Global Scale