The Digital Divide

1. The Digital Divide
Problems with the concept of ‘We
Media’

2. • 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.

3. 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?

4. Who is Excluded?
• For each of the following graphs, identify the
social group/type of person being excluded.

15. 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.

16. 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?

17. 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.

18. 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)

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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?

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

23. 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.

24. 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

25. 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%)

26. Global Scale