Use of the Internet and the
Digital Divide
Internet and Society
2008
James Stewart, University of Edinburgh
https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/IandS/

Outline
 Adoption and Appropriation
 Non-use
 Design for use
 Who uses the Internet?
 Statistics
 Social Exclusion
 Digital Divide
 Policy
 Global DD : Development, appropriation

Issues and Ideas
 Diffusion and the s-curve
 Studying use and users
 Appropriation and domestication
 Non-users
 Design-use issues.
 Social Exclusion
 Digital divide and social exclusion
 International exclusion

Diffusion and the S-curve
Market penetration
 Groups of users
 Innovators, early
adopters, etc
 Demand-side:
Network effects
 Supply side:
Economies of scale
 S-curve limit
 National differences
 Gender differences
 Generation of techs time

Internet Penetration

Adopter groups
 Many studies suggesting different groups
of adopters. E.g.
 Enthusiasts - innovators
 Pragmatists
 Reluctant
 Rejectors
 Not a Binary division
 What factors underline these types of
categories?

Example of analysis

Adoption and Appropriation
 How and why people adopt
 Motivations and resources
 Voluntary or obliged adoption
 Why adopt and use innovations? (consumer research)
 Functional: they do something practical
 Experiental: they provide sensual pleasure
 Identity: products provide expression of self identity
 Social and individual context
 Network effects

Appropriation and Domestication
 How technologies come into local settings
 Learning
 Formal, informal, learning by doing, community
learning
 Social processes
 Local experts, local economy, power
 User innovation
 Limiting use, giving up use.
 Proxy use

Non-use of ICT
 Why people don’t adopt
 “Not relevant”,”no use”
 “Too complicated”, “too fiddly”
 Practical, experiential, identity factors
 Physical / Cognitive barriers
 Subjective reactions
 No resources
 No motivation
 No community
 Constrained agency
 Resistors, Delayers and Rejectors
 Need triggers to use
 These come from other changes in life

Theory and Design
 Excluded by design
 Feminist studies of technology design
 Design for all
 Keyboard, GUI, metaphors,
 Excluded by policy
 Use built from most engaging use
 Social uses
 Entertainment

Social trends
 Independent women
 ICT families
 Wealthy young-old
 Consumer Society
 Network society
 Mega-Cities
 Mobility in work - work rationalisation
 Migrations
(reduced costs)

The case of the Internet
 Use and non-use
 Non-organisational
 Sources
 OII report/World Internet report
 Ofcom
 National Statistics
 Scottish Statistics
 Pew
 Eurescom
 MORI etc
 Eurostat

Use of internet
 USA 76% of adults (Pew May 08) 24%
 UK 67% (OxII 2007) 33% non-users

European use (Eurostat 2007).
 Eurostat 2006

Household access (OxII)

Non-ownership of all comms services

Non users adopting less

Intention to get internet at home

Non use (OXII)

Use/Adoption Factors
 Correlates with:
 Income
 Age and Lifestage
 Region
 Professional activity
 Education
 Sex
 Ability/Disability
 Capital/Wealth
 Family with children

Age and Socio-economic Profile of
home internet

Income

Education

Involuntary non-use: income and
disability

Scottish Household Survey: Car
availability

Gender differences in driving skills
(Scotland)

Proxy Use
Have some to ask

For those who do have access…

Time Spent online

Where access internet (OxII)

What do we do online?

What do we do online?

Communication

Uses: Entertainment

Ecommerce

Viewing user-created video

Participation
 Posting to
the Internet
 OIS 2005

Participation 2

Use of SNS

“Have you done

any of the
following things on
the Internet in the
last year? –
Created a profile
on a social
networking site
such as YouTube,
MySpace or
Facebook?”
OxII 2007


Multiple media use

Don’t take my TV away!

Don’t take away my Facebook (OxII 2007)

\"misuse of email at work' eDesigns
2002
\"Top ten email ‘misuse’ by \"Top ten email ‘misuse’ by
women\"
men\"
Flirting in the office 27% Planning social life with friends 32%
Gossiping about staff 18% Contacting siblings 18%
Forwarding pornographic URLs 13% Gossiping about staff 15%
Contacting non-work friends 16% Flirting in the office 13%
Organising social life 11% Forwarding pornographic URLs 7%
Forwarding jokes to colleagues 5% Seek new employment 6%
Seek new employment 4% Forwarding jokes to colleagues 4%
Communicating with overseas 3% Transfer work to web based email 3%
relations addresses
Contact paren t s 2% Contact overseas relation s 1%

Social Exclusion
 Unequal but free agents with opportunity.
 Dimensions
 No access to work/labour market
 Consumer
 Identity
 Community
 Citizenship
 Issues (e.g. Atkinson 1996)
 Relative in society
 Role of Agency
 Dynamics
 Individual, family or community
 Excluded groups
 Disabled, Ethic minorities, Religious groups,Women, Homeless
 Not just ‘the poor’ or ‘working class’

Inclusion and Exclusion via ICTs
 Technical Fix for excluded groups
 Work inclusion
 Community - end isolation
But
 Can’t adopt, won’t adopt
 No money, no skills, no interest, no trust
 Result-> ‘Digital’ exclusion
 Poor Jobs
 Limited Gov services
 Limited Information
 Few Consumer benefits
 Isolation from new culture
 New excluded groups - older men

Labour market exclusion:Women
 Exclusion from best jobs
 Creation of ‘the Internet’
 Very low participation of women in engineering
and IT professions, especially in ‘West’
 But
 High in Far East
 Media starts to dominate, and female dominated
professions
 Women in the network society question

Problems
 Access
 Resources (time, money, experience, social
network)
 Local exclusion
 Literacy and Skills
 Basic literacy
 Information age literacy
 Motivation
 Social and individual issues
 Life-stage
 e.g. identity

Policy
 Social Policy
 Unemployment
 Social cohesion
 Industrial Policy
 skilled workforce
 Consumer market

Policy
 Provide access
 Provide skills (Euro comp driving licence)
 Local experts - change agents
 User friendly spaces - cybercafes, telecentres,
computers in hairdressers
 Free computers+ for whole communities
 Liberalisation
 Government-industry partnerships
 Rely on ‘s-curve’
 ‘Thin’ use.
 Can remove barriers, but not create motivations

E-inclusion=Social inclusion?
 Claire Buré paper.
 Subcultural appropriation
 Can act as a bridge
 Can reinforce subcultural and excluded
life.

Questions
 Is the digital divide an important factor in
social exclusion?
 What policies can help promote adoption
 Does technology adoption really lead to
social inclusion?

Global Digital Divide
 Development agenda
 Centre - periphery, North-South
 ‘Development’ model
 Black-holes: ‘silent zones’, 4th world
 Irrelevance of the Internet
 To expensive, no electricity, no skills etc
 Better things to spend money on:
 Health, water, food, roads,education
 Problem of government control and corruption
 But
 Enabling technology
 Leapfrogging

Global Digital Divide 2
 Donors
 Education, telecentres, phone banks
 Liberalisation
 Foreign investment
 Infrastructure - Mobile phones
 New markets
 Industry (outsourcing)
 Indigenous economic development
 Relevant Technology
 Mobile phones
 Payment systems
 Stimulate local innovation

Presentation
 Telecommunications policy in SA
 and mobile phones for development

Problems and Benefits
 Socio-cultural issues.
 Trust
 Local economy and cultural barriers
 Economic divides
 Elites
 Still too expensive
 Need for sustainability
 Donor projects
 Benefits
 Bottom up use innovation
 Social cohesion in migration
 etc

Never Catch up
 Many interlocking issues.
 Always new technologies
 Increased commercialisation
 Are the vanguard opening up the gap?
 New Society?:
 Global elites
 Entertainment consumers
 Subcultures
 Excluded

Next Week: Community and Identity
 Reading:
 Feenberg, A., Bakardjieva, M (reading pack)
 Darin ch 4, Castells ch 5
 Presentations:
 Wellman \"Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet
Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired
Suburb\"
 MMPRPGs/Online worlds
 Assignments:
 Diary of whom and how you communicate.
 Blog entry on importance of internet and mobile phone
for your social and study life.
 Or on your experience of online community