This book examines the digital divide between Western and Southern Europe, specifically looking at Greece, Portugal, and the UK. It assesses the role of socio-cultural and policy factors in influencing the digital divide between these regions. Through interviews with ordinary citizens, it links their perspectives on the digital divide to the role of policymakers and regulators. The study identifies socio-cultural and decision-making parameters as important influences on the Western-Southern European divide and argues this divide is the result of a complex interplay of these factors and should be viewed as a hierarchy of multiple divides.

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DigitalDividesinEuropePanayiotaTsatsou
This book examines the hotly debated subject of digital divides
and specifically addresses the Western–Southern divide in Europe.
It offers insights into selected countries of Southern and Western
Europe – Greece, Portugal and the UK – and assesses the role of
socio-cultural and decision-making parameters in the Western–
Southern divide. It explores ordinary people’s insights into the
digital divide and links them to the role policymakers and regulators
play in the development of the information society. Thus, it offers
an innovative approach that crosses disciplines and brings new
media studies closer to cultural studies and the study of politics.
The study identifies the role of decision-making and socio-cultural
parameters in the Western–Southern divide in Europe and concludes
that this divide should be seen as a ladder of divides influenced by
a complex set of socio-cultural and policy/regulatory factors. The
book reaches significant case-specific conclusions for the Western–
Southern divide and argues about its profoundly socio-cultural and
political/regulatory nature, while highlighting the implications for
the European information society as a whole.
Panayiota Tsatsou was born in 1976 in Greece. She is a lecturer
in Media and Communication at Swansea University, United
Kingdom. Her research lies in the areas of information society,
media policy and regulation, political communication, media
and gender, and new media and children. Her research work
examines various phe­nom­ena in relation to Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs), with an emphasis on regu­
lation and policy creation, as well as on the role of ordinary
people as ICT users and actors in the information society. Her
publications aim to report on innovative and evidence-based
solutionstoissuesarisingintheinformationsociety.Shecurrently
holds an AHRC award to study digital inclusion among minority
communities in Wales.
Peter Lang
Panayiota Tsatsou
Digital Divides in Europe
Culture, Politics and the
Western–Southern Divide
InterdisciplinarycommunicationStudies
ISBN 978-3-0343-0189-3
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www.peterlang.com