From Digital Divide to Social Opportunities (Paper)
From Digital Divide to Social Opportunities
Jan A.G.M. van Dijk
University of Twente,
Department of Communication
Professor in the Sociology of the Information Society
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Three basic questions
3. Results of five years of digital divide research (2000-2005)
4. Starting to find answers to the basic questions
5. Better social opportunities with digital media: policies for skills and usage access
6. Korea shows the way to East Asia and the rest of the world
Paper written for the 2nd International Conference for Bridging the Digital
Divide
Seoul, Korea
2nd December, 2005
Host : Ministry of Information and Communication(MIC)
Joint Organizers:
o Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion(KADO)
o The Korean Association for Information Society
1. Introduction
In the second half of the 1990s the attention for the subject of unequal access to and use
of the new media started to focus on the concept of the so-called digital divide. Before
that time more general concepts were used such as information inequality, information
gap or knowledge gap and computer or media literacy. The origin of the term digital
divide goes back to an unknown American source in the middle of the 1990s and was
first used in an official publication by the US Department of Commerce’s National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA, 1999). - See Gunkel (2003)
for more details about the origin of the term.- The digital divide commonly refers to the
gap between those who do and those who do not have access to new forms of
information technology. Most often these forms are computers and their networks but
other digital equipment such as mobile telephony and digital television are not ruled out
by some users of the term.
The term digital divide probably has caused more confusion than clarification. According
to Gunkel (2003) it is a deeply ambiguous term in the sharp dichotomy it refers to. Van
Dijk (2003, 2005) has warned of a number of pitfalls of this metaphor. First, the
metaphor suggests a simple divide between two clearly divided groups with a yawning
gap between them. Secondly, it suggests that the gap is difficult to bridge. A third
misunderstanding might be the impression that the divide is about absolute inequalities,
that is between those included and those excluded. In reality most inequalities of the
access to digital technology observed are more of a relative kind (see below). A final
mistaken connotation might be the suggestion that the divide is a static condition while
in fact the gaps observed are continually shifting (also see below). Both Gunkel and van
Dijk have emphasized that the term echoes some kind of technological determinism. It is
often suggested that the origins of the inequalities referred to lie in the specific problems
of getting physical access to digital technology and that achieving such access for all
would solve particular problems in the economy and society. In the last suggestion not
only a technological bias but also a normative bias is revealed.
The great merit of the sudden rise of the term digital divide at the turn of the century is
that it has put the important issue of inequality in the information society on the
scholarly and political agenda. Between the years 2000 and 2004 hundreds of scientific
and policy conferences and thousands of sessions on regular conferences have been
dedicated to this issue under the call of the term digital divide. In the years 2004 and
2005 attention has started to decline. From a scientific point of view the concept ran into
difficulties; ever more expressions such as ‘redefining the digital divide’ and ‘beyond
access’ appeared. In terms of policy and politics many observers, particularly in the rich
and developed countries, reached the conclusion that the problem was almost solved as
a rapidly increasing majority of their inhabitants obtained access to computers, the
Internet and other digital technologies.
In this paper I will argue that the digital divide is far from closed. On the contrary, it is
deepening (van Dijk, 2005). The divide in terms of physical access is closing in the
developed countries such as South Korea, though large gaps are still apparent between
cities and rural areas, young people and the elderly and between people with low and
high income or education. However, the divide in terms of skills and usage of digital
technologies persists or is even growing. With the development of skills and usage digital
technologies are embedded in the every day life of work, school, family life, social
relationships and culture. Here they happen to become more or less social opportunities
for people. The growing inequality of social opportunity caused by unequal use of digital
technologies is the focus of this paper. It will also focus on the Korean situation as much
as possible.
2. Three basic questions
According to the renowned moral economist Amyrta Sen every investigator of a problem
concerning equality has to answer the question: “Equality of what?” (Sen, 1992, p. ix).
So, a first basic question would be: What inequality does the digital divide concept refer
to? A first glance through the social-scientific and economic literature already results in
ten potential answers that can be listed as technological, immaterial, material, social and
educational types of (in)equality:
Technological
Immaterial
Material
Social
Educational
Technological opportunities
Life chances
Freedom
Capital (economic, social, cultural)
Resources
Positions
Power
Participation
Capabilities
Skills
Below I will argue that all of these types of inequality can be observed in digital divide
research. Still the most popular is technological opportunities because physical access to
computers, networks and other technologies has attracted the most attention. In
considering the demographics that are related to digital divides the three forms of capital
and resources have been amply used. In the last few years the focus of attention has
also shifted to capabilities and skills, particularly when educational solutions to the digital
divide problem are proposed.
The first general question might lead to two other basic questions:
The suggestion in many digital divide investigations is that this phenomenon is just as
new as the technology it is linked to. The divides observed are related to age-old
demographics of income, education, age, sex and ethnicity but no comparison is made
with other things that are unequally divided in contemporary or past societies. Most often
any historical perspective is lacking. However, there is no escape for the following basic
question: What is exactly new about the inequality of access to and use of information
and communication technology as compared to other scarce material and immaterial
resources in society?
When this second question is answered in an affirmative way (there are new aspects to
be observed) this could lead to a third question: Do new types of inequality rise or exist
in the information and network society? If so, what are these types? This question
presumes the acceptance of the concepts of information society and/or network society.
This is not a matter of necessity; both concepts are contested. But most digital divide
researchers do accept these concepts in one way or another. Ever if they were not to
accept them, they would still have to answer the question of whether they find new types
of inequality in their observations of digital divides.
These three basic questions will serve as a touchstone for the following summary of
results of digital divide research. Has it (at least) started to answer these questions?
3. Results of five years of digital divide research (2000-2005)
3.1. Types of access
Digital divide research has started with the observation of the number and categories of
persons who have a computer and network connection at their disposal. This is a case of
having a particular technological opportunity. The technological orientation of this early
digital divide research led to the equalization of media or technology access with physical
access. Currently, the majority of this research still pays most attention to physical
access. However, since the year 2002 ever more investigators have made the call to go
‘beyond access’, to reframe the overly technical concept of the digital divide and to
devote more attention to social, psychological and cultural backgrounds. Some have
extended the concept of access for this purpose, others have added the concepts of
(digital) skills or competencies and media or technology use and applications.
In this article a model that extends the concept of access will be used as a framework to
expose the main achievements of digital divide research (Van Dijk, 2003, 2005). See
Figure 1. The succession of types of access that characterizes this model are validated in
multivariate research (de Haan & Iedema, in press). This succession is elaborated
because media or technology access should be seen as a process with many social,
mental and technological causes and not as a single event of obtaining a particular
technology.(Bucy and Newhagen, 2004, van Dijk, 2005). In this model material access is
preceded by motivational access and succeeded by skills access and usage access. When
the full process of technology appropriation is completed, according to this ideal scheme,
a new innovation arrives and the process starts again, wholly or partly.
Figure 1
A Cumulative and Recursive Model of Successive Kinds of Access
to Digital Technologies (Source: van Dijk, 2005, p. 22)
The concept of material access comprises physical access and other types of
access that are required to reach complete disposal and connections such as conditional
access (subscriptions, accounts, pay-per-view). The concept skills access is divided in
three types of skills that often assume the following order: first a computer user has to
acquire operational skills, than s(he) has to develop and apply information skills and
finally strategic skills (the capacity to use computer and network sources as means for
particular goals in society). Usage access is the final stage and ultimate goal of the
process of technological appropriation in the shape of particular applications.
3.2. Material access
I will start with the research that has produced data about material access because this
was the predominant focus of attention until fairly recently. The largest part of digital
divide research is dedicated to the observation of divides of physical access to personal
computers and the Internet among demographical categories that are obvious in this
respect: income, education, age, sex and ethnicity. The first nation-wide surveys in the
developed countries at the end of the 1990s and the turn of the century all showed
growing gaps of access between people with high and low income or education and
majority ethnicities as compared to minority ethnicities. However, the gender physical
access divide has closed in those years. Yet, complete closure only happened in the
Northern American and North-Western European countries. With regard to age the
relationship is curved: physical access culminates in the age group of 25 to 40 and
sharply declines afterwards. Clearly, the youngest generation and women benefit from
the household possession of computers, as households are the most familiar survey unit
of measurement. The best representative surveys of that period are the first four
American NTIA reports (NTIA, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002), parts of the annual
Eurobarometers (see http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/index_en.htm) and a
recent overview of the European digital divides by Eurostat (2005) and two OECD-reports
(2000, 2001). From the years 2000–2002 onwards the physical access divides in the
northern developed countries started to decline as the categories with high income and
education reached a partial saturation and people with lower income and education
started to catch up (NTIA, 2002, Horrigan and Rainie, 2002, Eurobarometer 56-63, 20012005). However, in the developing countries the physical access divide kept widening
and is still widening (United Nations Statistics Division, 2004, van Dijk, 2005).
Probably, the path of the physical access divide follows the familiar S-curve of the
adoption of innovations. However, the path is much more complex and differentiated
among groups of the population than the S-curve projects (van Dijk and Hacker, 2003)
and there are serious problems with mainstream diffusion theory considering computer
and Internet technology (see van Dijk, 2005, p. 62-65). One of these problems is treated
by Norris (2001) who makes a distinction between a normalization and a stratification
model of diffusion. In the normalization model it is presupposed that the differences
between groups only increase in the early stages of adoption and that differences
disappear with saturation in the last stages. In the stratification model it is assumed that
1) there is a different point of departure of the access curve for the higher and the lower
social strata and 2) a different point of arrival: for some strata it might never reach 90 to
100 percent.
The two models lead to quite different projections of the evolution of the digital divide
from the current situation. See Figure 2. This figure compares the curve of adoption of
the highest social strata and the lowest social strata in the developed countries and it
shows how they come together closing the physical access divide. Finally, it projects
(almost) complete future closure when a normalization model applies and the
continuation of a gap when the stratification model applies.
Figure 2
Real and projected long-term trend of the gap of physical access to computers and the
Internet in the most developed countries; high social strata compared to low social strata
At the time of writing (2005) I would estimate from all the available statistics that there
is still a gap of about 50 percent between the highest and the lowest social strata (90
percent diffusion as compared to 40 percent diffusion) in the most developed countries
and that in these countries approximately 25 to 30 percent of the total population still
has no home access to computers and the Internet at all. In less developed countries this
figure swiftly increases to reach a majority and in Third World countries it is a vast
majority of 90, 95 or even more percent of the population.
What are the most important background characteristics of the physical access divide?
Usually they are presented in descriptive statistics of simple correlations. Then it appears
that the highly correlated variables of income, education and occupation are the most
important ones. Multivariate regression analyses with structural equation models are
much less frequent. Such analysis was made in a large-scale representative Dutch survey
in 2000 (van Dijk, de Haan and Rijken, 2000) later summarized in English (de Haan,
2003). It appeared at that time that income was the most important factor for physical
access, much more than education, and age the second. Age reveals a curvilinear
relation as mentioned above. With the declining costs of computer equipment in recent
years the importance of income is somewhat reduced but it remains the most important
factor for material access as a whole because total computer and Internet access costs
(peripherals, printing costs, software, subscriptions and connection costs) barely
diminish. In poor countries lack of income remains the decisive barrier.
The background variables mentioned reveal that material and social types of inequality
are prevalent in digital divide research explaining differences of physical access. The
concepts economic, social and cultural capital are the most popular ones. Others defend
a resource based approach (van Dijk, L. et al. 2000, De Haan, 2003). My work combines
a resource based and a social position or network approach (vanDijk 2005). According to
this approach differences of physical access are related to a distribution of resources
(temporal, mental, material, social and cultural) that in turn is explained by personal
categories such as age, sex, intelligence, personality and ability and positions in society
(of labour, education and household position).
3.3. Motivational access
Prior to physical access comes the wish to have a computer and to be connected to the
Internet. Many of those who remain at the ‘wrong’ side of the digital divide have
motivational problems. Considering digital technology it appears that there are not only
‘have-nots’, but also ‘want-nots’. In the age of Internet hype this was a much neglected
phenomenon. Research among non-users and the unconnected is relatively scarce. At the
turn of the century German and American surveys (ARD-ZDF, 1999a and NTIA, 2000)
showed that the main reasons for the refusal to use computers and get connected to the
Internet were:
- no need or significant usage opportunities;
- no time or liking;
- rejection of the medium (the Internet and computer games as ‘dangerous’
media);
- lack of money;
- lack of skills.
In several European and American surveys reported between 1999 and 2003 it was
revealed that half of the unconnected to the Internet at that time explicitly responded
that they would refuse to get connected, for the list of reasons just mentioned (e.g. ARDZDF, 1999b and a Pew Internet and American Life survey (Lenhart et al., 2003).
These observations lead us to one of the most confusing myths produced by popular
ideas about the digital divide: that people are either in or out, included or excluded. The
last named survey revealed that the Internet population in fact is ever shifting (Lenhart
et al.). First, there are so-called intermittent users: in 2002 between 27% and 44% of
American Internet users reported that they had gone off-line for extended periods. A
second, often unnoticed group, are the dropouts that have more or less permanently lost
connection to the Internet. Their number was 10 percent of the American population in
2002. The next group is the ‘net-evaders’ , about 8% in this survey, that simply refuse to
use the Internet and it does not matter whether they have the resources or not (among
them older managers charging their secretaries to use email and search the Internet and
persons being proud of not using that ‘filthy medium’ or computers that are related to
‘women’s work’).
The ever-shifting Internet population focuses our attention to a second, perhaps even
more important, myth produced by the misleading dichotomy of the digital divide. This is
the assumption that those who have a computer or Internet connection are actually using
it. Many presumed users use the computer or the Internet only once a week or a couple
of times a month, a few people even never use them. Measuring computer and Internet
access in survey questions often conflates possession or connection with use or usage
time. Time diary studies and the like show much larger differences or divides between
categories of people as will be argued with usage access below (3.5). Here the vanished
physical access gap of gender in some Western countries appears to be all but closed.
Conversely, with actual computer and Internet usage gender differences are becoming
more pronounced.
The factors explaining motivational access are both of a social or cultural and a
mental or psychological nature. A primary social explanation is that “the Internet does
not have appeal for low-income and low-educated people” (Katz & Rice, 2002, p. 93). To
dig deeper into the reasons for this lack of interest it seems appropriate to complement
the large-scale surveys with qualitative studies in local communities and cultural groups.
This was done for instance by Laura Stanley in a San Diego study in poor Latino and
African American working class neighbourhoods (Stanley, 2001) and by the University of
Texas in poor communities of Austin (Rojas et al., 2004). They discovered the
importance of traditional masculine cultures (rejecting computer work that is not ‘cool’
and ‘something girls do’) and of particular minority and working class lifestyles.
However, most pronounced are mental and psychological explanations. Here the
phenomena of computer anxiety and techno-phobia come forward. Computer anxiety is a
feeling of discomfort, stress, or fear experienced when confronting computers (Brosnan,
1998, Chua, Chen, & Wong, 1999, Rockwell & Singleton, 2002). Technophobia is a fear
of technology in general and a distrust of its beneficial effects. According to a
representative UCLA survey of 2003, more than 30 percent of new American Internet
users reported that they were moderately to highly technophobic and the same applied
to 10 percent of experienced Internet users (UCLA, 2003, p. 25). Computer anxiety and
technophobia are major barriers of computer and Internet access, especially among
seniors, people with a low educational level and a part of the female population. These
phenomena do not completely disappear with a rise in computer experience.
The continuation of anxiety is partly explained by personality characteristics. The
Big Five personality dimensions (agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism,
extraversion, and openness) are known to be related to computer use, attitude and
stress (Hudiburg, 1999). For example, neuroticism aggravates problems experienced in
approaching and using computers and extraversion alleviates them. See Hudiburg (1999)
and Finn & Korukonda (2004) for the personality dimensions related to computer use.
3.4. Skills access
After having acquired the motivation to use computers and some kind of physical access
to them, one has to learn to manage the hardware and software. Here the problem of a
lack of skills might appear according to the model in Figure 1. This problem is framed
with terms such as ‘computer, information or multimedia literacy’ and ‘computer skills’ or
‘information capita’. Steyaert (2000) and van Dijk (1999, 2003, 2005) introduced the
concept of ‘digital skills’ as a succession of three types of skill. The most basic are
‘instrumental skills’ (Steyaert) or ‘operational skills’ (van Dijk), the capacities to work
with hardware and software. These skills have acquired much attention in the literature
and in public opinion. The most popular view is that skills problems are solved when
these skills are mastered. However, many scholars engaged with information processing
in an information society have called attention to all kinds of information skills required to
successfully use computers and the Internet. Steyaert distinguishes between ‘structural
skills’ and ‘strategic skills’. I have proposed a comparable distinction between
‘information skills’ and ‘strategic skills’ (van Dijk, 2005). Information skills are the skills
to search, select, and process information in computer and network sources. Two types
of information skills are required: formal information skills (ability to work with the
formal characteristics of computers and the Internet, e.g. file and hyperlink structures)
and substantial information skills (ability to find, select, process, and evaluate
information in specific sources following specific questions). See van Dijk (2005, p. 81).
Steyaert and van Dijk both distinguish strategic skills. They can be defined as the
capacities to use computer and network sources as the means for particular goals and for
the general goal of improving one’s position in society.
Research into all these kinds of digital skills is scarce. Actually, the only data are
about the command of operational skills. Institutions offering computer courses
sometimes record the achievements of course takers. Some national surveys that ask
population samples to report about their computer and Internet skills are available (for
example van Dijk et al., 2000, Park, 2002, UCLA, 2001, 2003). Mostly, they only pay
attention to the command of hardware and software, not to information skills. However,
the biggest problem of these surveys is validity: are self-reports valid measurements of
actual skills possessed? In one of the UCLA Internet studies 63 percent of respondents
declared they had good or excellent abilities to use the Internet (UCLA, 2003, p. 24),
while a much more specific Dutch measurement of (mainly operational) digital skills by
self-reports showed that actually only young working males below 40 reached a 6 on a
nine-point scale and other groups a 2 to 5 (CBS/SCP, 2001).
The situation in Korea was first summarized in an article of Han Park (2002). In
the year 200o physical access to digital media in Korea was rising very fast, but digital
skills were lagging far behind:
Category
Value
No or very
Reasonable
Good skills
few skills
skills
All
45.6
41.0
13.4
Gender
Male
41.3
42.3
16.3
Female
51.8
39.2
9.0
Age
13-19
47.5
41.3
11.2
20-29
31.3
50.4
18.3
30-39
51.4
34.6
14.0
40-49
63.2
30.5
6.3
50-59
72.9
27.1
0.0
60-64
100
0.0
0.0
Occupation
Farmer/Fisher
66.7
25.0
8.3
Self-employer
61.9
28.5
9.6
Blue collar
52.2
37.4
10.3
White collar
27.2
51.8
21.0
Housewife
68.5
26.6
4.8
Middle/high
49.2
39.8
11.0
student
27.8
53.3
18.9
College student
39.4
48.5
12.1
Unemployed
Education
Low
93.3
6.7
0.0
Low-middle
59.7
33.2
7.1
High middle
42.0
44.0
13.9
High
28.1
50.0
21.9
Table 1 Distribution of Operational Digital Skills among South Koreans in 2000
n = 1513, index reliability Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.82.
Source: Information Culture Centre Seoul, 2000, Park, 2002.
These (Korean) and other inventories of digital skills are based on relatively
invalid surveys with self reports of skills. The other, and much better, scientific approach
is to organize performance tests in controlled environments. The only known attempt to
do this that has been reported – a few others are still collecting data – are the
experiments of the American new media researcher and sociologist Esther Hargittai. For
her dissertation she conducted a series of experimental tests with American user groups
charged with tasks of finding particular information on the Internet (Hargittai, 2002,
2003, 2004). So, she measured formal and substantial information skills. Subjects were
selected and matched according to age, sex and education. Enormous differences were
found in the measure of accomplishment and time needed to finish these tasks. Only half
of the experimental group was able to complete all tasks in the first experiment, but for
some subjects time required for a particular task was a few seconds while others needed
7 to 14 minutes (Hargittai, 2002).
The general impression of these skills investigations, both surveys and tests is (1)
that the divides of skills access are bigger than the divides of physical access and (2) that
while physical access gaps are more or less closing in the developed countries, the
(relative) skills gaps tend to grow, the information skills in particular. A striking result is
that those having a high level of traditional literacy also possess a high level of digital
information skills (van Dijk et al.2000, de Haan, 2003). These skills appear to be more
important for computer and Internet use than technical know how and the capacity to
deal with numerical data.
Another striking result from digital skills research is that people learn more of
these skills in practice, by trial and error, than in formal educational settings (de Haan
and Huysmans, 2002, van Dijk, 2005). The social context and social networking of
computer and Internet users appear to be decisive factors in the opportunities they have
for learning digital skills.
Asking for differences in strategic skills has not been an explicit research question
yet. Talking about these skills means making a transition to the actual usage of digital
media and how this usage may lead to more or less participation in several fields of
society.
3.5. Usage access
Actual usage of digital media is the final stage and ultimate goal of the total process of
appropriation of technology that is called access in this article. Having sufficient
motivation, physical access and skills to apply digital media are necessary but not
sufficient conditions of actual use. Usage has its own grounds or determinants. As a
dependant factor it can be measured in at least four ways:
1. Usage time;
2. Usage applications and diversity;
3. Broadband or narrowband use;
4. More or less active or creative use.
Current computer and Internet use statistics are notoriously unreliable with their shifting
and divergent operational definitions of use (see below), most often made by market
research bureaus. They only give some indication how much actual use differs from
physical access. For example, according to the market researcher Nielsen/NetRatings
once a month Internet use in a large number of countries is between one third and twothirds of those connected to the Internet (see:
http://www.clickz.com/stats/web_worldwide/). Though one may have many doubts
about the truth of these low figures, most observers would agree that actual use diverges
substantially from potential use. More exact measures of daily, weekly or monthly
Internet use are reported in the annual surveys of f.i. the Pew Internet and American Life
Project (www.pewinternet.org) and the UCLA Internet Reports (www.digitalcenter.org) .
However, the most valid and reliable estimations of actual usage time are made in
detailed daily time diary studies that are representative for a particular country. They
sometimes produce striking results. For example the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning
Agency found in a 2001 time diary study that the number of weekly hours of computer
and Internet use of males was double as compared to females (SCP, 2001). The gender
physical access gap may have been closed almost in the Netherlands, but this certainly
does not apply to the usage gender gap.
Comparable results appear in surveys relating usage applications to demographic
characteristics of users (see for the US Howard et al., 2001, Horrigan & Rainie, 2002a,
UCLA Center for Communication Policy, 2003). Specific social categories of users prefer
different kinds of applications. The referred studies just named all show significant
differences among users with different social class, education, age, gender and ethnicity.
Some investigators (van Dijk, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, Bonfadelli, 2002, Park, 2002,
Cho et al, 2003) even perceive a so-called usage gap between people with different social
class and education that is comparable to the phenomenon of the knowledge gap that
has been observed from the 1970s onwards. While the knowledge gap is about the
differential derivation of knowledge from the mass media, the usage gap is a broader
thesis about a differential use of whole applications in daily practices. Van Dijk (2005, p.
130) observes ‘the first signs of a usage gap between people of high social position,
income, and education using the advanced computer and Internet applications for
information, communication, work, business, or education and people of low social
position, income, and education using more simple applications for information,
communication, shopping, and entertainment’.
The usage gap in Korea was demonstrated by Han Park using 2001 ICC data:
Table 2. The usage gap of Computer and Internet Apllications in South Korea.
Source: Han Park, 2002, p.14-15 based on ICC 2001 data; n= 10351
WordSpread Data- Graphic Games
Learning
proces- sheet
base
Music
EnterEducation
sing
tainment
ALL
86.9
49.0
18.2
58.6
77.6
48.5
GENDER Male
87.7
44.2
21.2
61.2
81.2
46.1
Female
86.0
23.8
14.5
55.2
73.2
51.5
AGE
7-13
73.5
23.8
6.8
43.8
93.0
68.7
14-19
90.6
45.0
15.5
72.3
90.2
59.4
20S
90.8
61.4
22.2
71.3
79.2
38.4
30S
88.6
55.8
22.4
55.1
71.8
49.6
40S
87.3
47.8
19.1
49.5
63.8
42.3
Over
81.8
39.5
15.7
34.9
51.3
23.2
50
WordSpread Data- Graphic Games
Learning
proces- sheet
base
Music
EnterEducation
sing
tainment
Occupa- Farmer
88.2
35.3
14.7
41.2
64.7
38.2
tion
Fisher
Self
83.1
44.7
19,7
48.6
70.9
33.2
employed
Blue
77.2
38.2
15.o
47.6
74.7
31.3
collar
White
95.7
72.9
27.3
62.0
67.8
41.9
collar
Housewife 83.6
38.9
13.3
50.2
67.1
51.1
Student
73.3
23.9
6.9
43.8
92.2
69.2
Primary
Student
92.2
51.3
18.9
74.9
87.8
55.7
middle/
high
Unem88.1
53.2
19.0
63.4
78.4
40.7
ployed/
Others
Han Park (2002, p. 15) explains that “word processing is broadly used across various
sectors of Korea. However, there are substantial differences in the use of
other applications among people of different gender, age and occupation. Women use all
applications significantly less than males except for educational applications. People
above 50 use all applications less than people under 50 are using them. The same goes
for blue-collar workers as compared to white-collar workers. The differences between
blue-collar and white-collar workers are the largest with the most difficult or advanced
applications for work: spreadsheets, databases and utilities. They are the smallest with
relatively simple or educational applications: graphic/music, Internet, game or
entertainment applications and some applications of learning. This may be due to scanty
opportunities. Blue collars usually get less exposure to the new media at their workplace.
On the other hand, the wide use of new technology in the office helps white-collar
workers remain active users of those applications. They will easily access and use a large
number of different software applications. The greater the chance, the more likely it is
that the people will access to digital applications and services. This reveals that there
exists a digital divide in skills as well as in usage.” What Han Park in fact was saying is
that closing the physical access divide does not automatically lead to better social
opportunities in using the new media for everybody.
Usage of narrowband versus broadband connections also appears to have a strong effect
on usage time and on the type and range of applications. People with broadband
connections take much more advantage of the opportunities of the new media. They are
much less deterred by the costs of connection time; they use many more applications
and for a longer time (Horrigan and Rainie, 2002b, UCLA, 2003). A ‘broadband elite’
arises that uses the connection for ten or more online activities on a typical day
(Horrigan and Rainie). Finally, broadband stimulates a much more active and creative
use of the Internet (Idem).
Despite its image of being interactive, most Internet usage, apart from emailing, is
relatively passive and consuming. Active and creative use of the Internet, that is the
offer of contributions to the Internet by users themselves is a minority phenomenon.
Active contributions are publishing a personal website, creating a weblog, posting a
contribution on an online bulletin board, newsgroup or community and perhaps, in a
broad definition, exchanging music and video files. In the USA 20% of online Americans
produced such content in 2002 in a narrow definition and 44% in 2003 in a broad
definition (Lenhart et al, 2003, 2004).
A general conclusion from a number of investigations of usage is that, increasingly, all
familiar social and cultural differences in society are reflected in computer and Internet
use.
4. Starting to find answers to the basic questions
Now I am ready to tell what answers current digital divide research has found to the
basic questions in section 2. The general qualification is that it has to offer only the
beginnings of such answers at best. This is due to the theoretical weakness of digital
divide research, the main shortcoming to be discussed in the next section. The question
of what inequality the digital divide concept refers to has inequality of technological
opportunities as its main answer. This is caused by the priority of physical access and by
the technological determinism revealed in the first years of digital divide research. From
the years 2002 and 2003 onwards the calls to go beyond (physical) access have led to
social scientific, communication and educational research emphasizing inequality of
social, cultural and information capital and resources. Additionally, some have called
attention to the inequality of positions and power in social networks that could lead to
unequal participation in several fields of society. Subsequently, attention shifted to
inequalities of skills, capabilities and interests when research started to deal with the
large-scale incorporation of digital media in daily life, in this way reflecting all social and
cultural differences in society.
Contemporary digital divide research has much more difficulty in providing answers to
the second basic question named above, the question of what is exactly new about the
inequality of access to and use of information and communication technology as
compared to other scarce material and immaterial resources in society. Answers can only
be found when we accept the concept of information society as a valid classification of
contemporary society. In that case we can call attention to the effects of information as a
source of inequality. In the literature one can find three effects of information that serve
as a basis of inequality.
First, information is considered to be a primary good (see Rawls, 1971 and Sen, 1985).
Primary goods are material and immaterial goods that are so essential for the survival
and self-respect of individuals that they cannot be exchanged for other goods, such as a
basic (survival) level of income, life chances, freedoms and fundamental rights.
Information has become a primary good in contemporary society as a particular - rising absolute minimum is necessary to participate in it. Not all people possess such a
minimum, for example (functional) illiterates. When digital media are gradually replacing
and surpassing the analogue print media they add another category on top of the
traditional illiterates: the ‘digital illiterates’.
Even more important than this absolute type of inequality in processing
information is the increasing role of relative differences in possessing and controlling
information in an information society. According to Castells (1996) information has
become an independent source of productivity and power. I have added that the relative
differences between social categories that were already unequal in terms of ‘old’ types of
resources and capital are amplified by the use of digital media because the control of
positions in an increasingly complex society and the possession of information and
strategic skills to acquire and maintain these positions are increasingly unequally divided
(van Dijk, 2005). In this way digital media usage contributes to new types of absolute
and relative inequality on top of the old ones, or they reinforce them.
This is backed by another characteristic of information. It can also be a positional
good (Hirsch, 1976). These are goods that, by definition, are scarce. Despite the
phenomenon of information overload in society, information can be scarce in particular
circumstances. Some positions in society create better opportunities than others for
gathering, processing and using valuable information. I have emphasized (van Dijk,
1999, 2005) that the importance of this condition is increasing in the nascent network
society. In this classification of society the positions people have in social and media
networks determines their potential power. As the importance of the media networks
created by computers and their networks increases in contemporary society, having no
position in these networks, or a marginal one, entails social exclusion. Conversely, those
that are very much included because they do have a central position, the so-called
information elite, increase their power, capital and resources. So, this is a second effect
of the possession of information in the information and network society that amplifies old
inequalities.
A third amplifying effect comes from information as a source of skills.
Investigators of the Dutch CPB (Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis) have
shown in an international comparative and historical survey of labour markets that the
successful appropriation of ICTs creates a so-called ‘skills premium’ (Nahuis and de
Groot, 2003). On the basis of very extensive quantitative longitudinal data of a large
number of countries they argue that the skills premium of having ICT skills is one of the
main causes of increasing income inequality in these countries in the 1980s and 1990s.
5. Better social opportunities with digital media: policies for skills and usage
access
It will be no surprise that the policy instruments proposed here are linked to the four
successive kinds discussed before. There is a logic in their description that is depicted in
the ‘wheel’ of policy instruments summarized in Figure 3. It starts with motivational
access and finishes with usage access.
FIGURE 3 A Wheel of Policy Instruments to Close the Digital Divide
Source: Jan van Dijk, The Deepening Divide, (2005) p. 207
In this paper the social opportunities of digital technology are emphasized. This means
primarily skills access and usage access.
Skills access
A corner stone of public access policy in the whole world is to connect all schools with at
least one Internet connection and a number of computers. This is a necessary condition
to learn all young people to work with computers. However, the influence of schools on
the level of digital skills is relatively low, at least at this moment and in the developed
countries. Children and young people learn more in practice, at home and from each
other than they do in class from teachers. In school they learn less subjects with the help
of ICTs than they learn to operate ICTs themselves. Operational skills are dominating
computer classes at schools. Information and strategic digital skills are neglected.
The reason for this mismatch is twofold: often teacher capabilities are inferior and most
educational software is inadequate. However, the most important task for schools to
improve skills access in the long run is to adapt their curricula to learn not only
operational but also information and strategic skills. They have to be fully integrated in
all school subjects. This means a revision of the traditional subjects of language and
mathematics first of all. Language subjects have to learn the capabilities of searching,
processing, reproducing and using information from an overabundance of increasingly
digital sources. Mathematics should contain elementary skills of processing computer
data. Subjects with names like media literacy or computer class have to be extended to
deal with the contents of television, the Internet, computer games or multimedia in
general and how to assess and handle them. Is it not strange that the most important
daily media reality for children, television and computer games, usually is not treated in
schools at all? Instead, schools are a completely different world of books, writing and
calculating.
To complete this task the preparation of better educational software is crucial. Rightfully
so, many traditional teachers are not convinced that digital ways of learning are better
than their own ‘age-old’ didactics. It has yet to be proved that they are. This could be
done on the basis of much better software. This software should also be made
appropriate for girls, disabled children, children with learning problems and coming from
a lower social or minority background. Even when this happens most traditional ways of
face-to-face instruction will not disappear. Information and strategic skills in particular
are a matter of substance and understanding to be exchanged in fully interactive
communication.
When teachers are convinced of the surplus value of ICTs to improve their education the
second basic problem can be solved. They will be motivated to learn better digital
teacher skills. They will be able to learn a lot to their pupils who themselves often have
much better operational skills to start with. The problem with learning from practice is
that many operational skills that do not immediately appear to be relevant are not
learned at all. This goes even stronger for information and strategic skills. So, despite the
fact that young people learn many digital skills outside school this institution remains
vital to learn all digital skills required. For children of poor families having no computer or
Internet connection at home school offers one of the few ways left to learn them.
Another step specifically focused at closing the digital divide in the long run, is to learn all
pupils in secondary education both basic and advanced skills at the level of the school
type concerned. When one group of students only learns simple or so-called remedial
drills for administration jobs, while other groups learn advanced information searching
and producing skills, the digital divide would be perpetuated and lead to a lasting usage
gap in jobs.
Because age is a basic determinant of the digital divide the extension of adult education
in learning digital skills is one of the most important policy directions to close the divide.
The problem is that most people above the age of 35, even in the developed countries,
have not learned any digital skills during their years of schooling. When they have not
found a job requiring computer work afterwards they only have the opportunity to learn
these skills themselves. They learn from computer books and courses, from their children
or from other proximate persons, most often at home. Unfortunately, governments offer
no structural solutions for this problem. Talk about ‘lifelong learning’ abounds, but
investment is scarce. Community technology centers, libraries and some subsidized social
and cultural educational institutions offering cheap computer courses most often are the
only options. Only a small part of the adult population uses these provisions to learn
digital skills. The image of these institutions is that they are made for ‘poor people’ and
minorities.
For this reason there is room for public and private initiatives in adult computer
education for much larger parts of the population emphasizing both distant education at
home and a combination of distant education and classes or meetings in attractive local
surroundings. The presumption made here is that this type of education is not only
required for people who have never touched a computer or had access to the Internet.
The lack of digital skills is spread across a much larger part of the adult population, even
in the advanced high-tech societies. This is a hidden problem that could be brought to
the surface by a farsighted public educational policy and attractive commercial offerings.
Usage access
As I have emphasized that practice is more important than formal education in learning
digital skills it will be no surprise that a number of policy instruments I propose are
appropriate to advance both skills and usage access. The most general one is to fill in
approaches that support learning on the job and at home. Basically this means two
things. First, suitable software programs should be made that do not only help to execute
tasks for jobs and studies in a straightforward and limited way but also assist in getting
to learn more operations than immediately required. Second, to mitigate the usage gap
employees should be allowed to learn more advanced applications at the job than they
need right away. For the same reason students in lower types of secondary education
should not only learn word processing and to fill databases or spreadsheets but also more
advanced programs to search and process information.
The following two instruments are focused at the groups lagging behind. To motivate the
use of computers and the Internet by the disabled, (functional) illiterates, elderly and
children, especially girls more special hardware and software design for these groups has
to be made. All of them have special preferences and mental, social and cultural
problems in handling interfaces. Unfortunately, not much investment is made in these
special designs as the market of these groups has no priority for producers.
Governments, special interest groups and non-for-profit organizations should step in.
Perhaps the most important instrument in stimulating the skills and usage of groups
lagging behind is to produce special content for cultural minorities and socially deprived
groups. Language problems, minority cultural interests and conditions of poverty serve
as barriers for motivational, skills and usage access. In Chapters 5 and 6 we have seen
that it is no surprise that the innovators and early adopters of digital technology follow
their own preferences in the supply and demand of particular contents and applications.
The Americans Lazarus & Mora (2000) have compiled a list of alternative Internet
contents that immediately show the omissions in current mainstream American website
supply.
In this paper the rise of usage gaps is stressed. It is a fundamental question whether
policy instruments should be devised at all to reduce these gaps in an individualizing and
differentiating society. Isn’t use a matter of free choice not to be directed by policy
makers ‘from above’? My answer would be that this is allowed as soon as absolute and
relative exclusion from types of usage would lead to structural information inequality.
Moreover, hasn’t every societal and government organization the right to encourage
particular types of usage and to drive back others? Isn’t this the policy of governments
and cultural institutions for ages?
Structural information inequality appears when particular parts of the population
systematically use the advanced and strategically important applications of ICTs for their
social position and career while other parts use the strategically unimportant applications
for recreation, entertainment, shopping and simple communication. The most general
policy option to prevent a further rise of structural inequality is to strongly support open
access of all socially relevant content in the new media. This means first of all open
access of all public and scientific information in computer programs and on the Internet.
It does not mean that these types of information should be without any cost to users.
That should certainly be the case for basic provisions of information and communication
such as government and health information. However, open access to other public and
scientific information, that has a particular market value, means that a large part of it
should be available as freeware and shareware. High-value specialist information has to
be available at reasonable prices for all those concerned. Open access to public and
scientific information also means that the current trend to expand patents on software
and all procedural en specialist information should be turned. This trend gives cause for
monopolistic practices hampering innovation and preventing vital types of access for all.
Increasingly, popular contents or contents for special interest groups are put behind
decoders and screens asking for user names and passwords. To prevent further social
and cultural divides in society open access to major cultural events has to be
safeguarded. These are national holiday events, championship games in sports with mass
appeal and cultural highlight happenings of a particular country. The European Union, for
example, has given its member states the opportunity to file a list with protected national
events.
Lower prices for computer hardware and Internet connection costs have been very
beneficial in closing physical access divides in the developed countries. However, the
prices for software and for many services of information and communication do not
decline. Supporting competition in software and services and competing monopolies are
important means to improve usage access. The support of the open source principle in
operating systems and other vital software for every computer and Internet user may not
only bring lower prices but also better software, perhaps even better software for lowskilled users.
The last-called actions were measures to prevent absolute exclusion. To mitigate the
relative exclusion that is part of all usage gaps the coupling of specific computer and
Internet applications to particular social classes has to be released. In jobs this means
better career opportunities organizing lifelong learning and vocational training of more
digital skills than immediately required and offering job rotation schemes in computer
applications. These are modern forms of human resources management. At schools this
also comes down to lifelong learning and a broad offer of computer courses for every
student, not following narrow divisions of studies and preparations for particular jobs.
However a full integration of ICTs in social and user environments remains the very best
option to improve usage access. ICTs should never be introduced as an end in
themselves. They should always be adapted to the local and specific needs of individual
and collective users.
6. Korea shows the way to East Asia and the rest of the world
In this last section I will argue that Korea is one of the most advanced countries in the
world in its attempt to close the digital divide. It is the number one in expanding physical
access, even regarding broadband connections. And between 2000 and 2005 the
activities of the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication and the KADO
institute clearly have prioritised the improvement of digital skills and usage access. The
size of the budget granted to KADO by the Korean government is comparatively the
highest in the world. KADO supports IT Accessibility, IT literacy and IT Productivity
mirroring the sequence this paper: from physical access to skills access and usage
access. KADO supports hundreds of community Internet access centres, provides
hundreds of thousands of Koreans with digital skills, especially people with few skills and
with handicaps. It promotes a productive and creative info culture that might reduce
current usage gaps. In defending a ‘sound’ information culture (info ethics and the
prevention of Internet addiction) it improves motivational access, as many potential
Internet users refrain from using it because they reject the many abuses and insecurities
of the Internet. Finally, it is waging unprecedented development work sending hundreds
of volunteers to more than 40 countries in the world. With this digital divide strategy
Korea is clearly different from the rest of East Asia and many other countries in the
world. In my book The Deepening Divide (2005) I made the following very critical
analysis of digital divide policies in other East Asian countries (pp. : 197-200):
“East Asia has become the third stronghold of ICT production and diffusion in the world,
next to Northern America and Europe. It specializes in hardware manufacturing and has
become the main producer of computers, telephone equipment, and computer
peripherals. The growth figures of ICT production in this region are impressive. Within a
decade, not only Japan but Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea were computerized,
with around 50% of the population having a PC and Internet access in 2003. South Korea
has even become the number one in broadband diffusion in the world. However, a clear
divide can be discerned between the more advanced countries in the region (Japan and
the so-called newly industrializing economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and
Taiwan) and the less developed countries, particularly in Southeast Asia (Wong, 2002).
In 2002, the last-named group had computer penetration rates between 12 per 100
inhabitants (Malaysia) and 1.2 per 100 in Indonesia and Internet connections between 27
per 100 (Malaysia) and 1 per 100 in Indonesia. China is experiencing explosive growth in
rates of ICT production and numbers of computer or Internet users.
The most important characteristic of the East Asian countries concerning the digital
divide is their strong emphasis on general technology diffusion through government
initiatives that stimulate the national private sector to manufacture ICTs. This is a
consequence of their character as “developmental states” (Castells, 1998).
Developmental states make strategic and selective interventions in the economy to
promote and sustain development, but they leave execution to private enterprise. In all
these countries, influential ministries have launched and coordinated nationwide plans to
promote information technology in society, from the Technopolis Program in Japan, the
Singapore One Project, and the Malaysian Super Corridor Project to the Cyber Korea 21
initiative. The ultimate aims of these plans was to accomplish universal service, not by
funds and subsidies, as in the United States, or by regulation, as in the EU, but by letting
the national telecom companies and electronics manufacturers roll out infrastructures
and produce equipment that will finally reach every household.
The main presumption behind this method of general technology diffusion is that
hardware diffusion will, first, boost industrial production of ICTs, will subsequently lead to
large-scale adoption of ICT by the population at large, and will finally result in the
development of digital skills, information services, and all kind of applications among the
new computer users. It is as if the sequential scheme of kinds of ICT access in this book
were being followed. Moreover, the whole process starts with stimulating motivational
access in the public information campaigns that accompany the nationwide plans.
Unfortunately, this stage approach may lead to stagnation after some time, as digital
skills, user experience, and the local development of applications are needed to reap the
fruits of ultimately much more profitable software, innovative design, and service supply
(Wong, 2002, p. 169) and to build a fully mature information society.
The essential problem of the East Asian countries is their overemphasis on ICT
production as compared to use. Kraemer and Dedrick (2002) argue that the digital divide
in use of ICT between Asian and non-Asian countries is growing. “Asian countries have
lagged in adopting IT due to language barriers, organizational resistance, and in some
cases, government policies that promoted computer production at the expense of use by
raising trade barriers” (p. 35). They note one exception: “The only place in Asia where
production and use have flourished has been Singapore, where government policies have
explicitly pushed both supply and demand” (p. 37). The most strongly growing sectors of
the information economy in East Asia also are software and services, but except in Japan
and Singapore, the proportion is negligible; for example, 11.8% in South Korea in 2001
(Ministry of Information and Communication, 2002) and 1% in China (Meng & Li, 2002).
There are serious consequences of a hardware and technology push orientation for digital
divide policies. First, there is scarcely any focus on the inclusion of deprived groups and
remote regions. National and business interests are at the core of ICT policies. Probably
it is assumed that general technological diffusion ultimately includes everybody and all
places. There are no subsidies for disadvantaged groups. The promotion of public access
in a variety of access points has no priority. Although they are often severely controlled
by the government, as in China, Malaysia, and Singapore, public access is left to private
initiatives (Internet cafés and the like).
Second, the prime orientation is economic and technical, not social and educational.
There is a lack of attention to human resources. A good illustration is the introduction of
ICT in South Korea. The impressive results of the hardware diffusion of computers and
Internet connections in this country were not accompanied by sufficient distribution of
digital skills and usage applications in the year 2000 (Park, 2002). Table 1 shows that
more than 45% of the South Korean population had no or very few digital skills in 2000.
Additionally, a usage gap of different applications appeared between Koreans with high
and low levels of education and blue- and white-collar occupations (Park, 2002). I have
no room to offer additional data here, but I would like to note that there is data to show
that skills and usage access divides are bigger in East Asian countries than they are in
North America or in northern or western Europe. A massive technology push by
governments does not automatically lead to sufficient digital skills and a diversity of
locally attractive usage applications. In line with the main message of this book, it may
be seen that skills access and usage access require more, not less, effort than does
physical access. Efforts by governments to promote technology and to build skills should
be made in parallel, not in succession.
A third consequence of the hardware orientation is less educational investment, other
than supplying schools with computers and network connections, in East Asia than in
North America and in Europe as a whole. In most East Asian countries, educational
investment started in sections of higher education and industry and largely remains in
these sections. Basic, secondary, and adult education lag far behind. Educational
innovation (new didactics, curricula, and course software) is scarce.
A final characteristic of the East Asian digital divide is the modest attention to content
and application development. Important exceptions are the translation of Western
software and the production of contents and Internet hosts in the local language. This is
done to promote local culture and because reading and writing English are a big problem
in the large majority of the East Asian countries. This modest attention is a consequence
of the relatively small effort to produce software and services (discussed earlier).” (197200)
I have no problem and I am even happy to admit that in the mean time my book is
already partly wrong, that this picture should be corrected concerning South Korea and
Singapore. In the last 2-3 years particularly Korea has made a shift in the right direction
according to the analysis in this paper and my previous publications on the digital divide.
In this way it is becoming an example not only for East Asia but also for the rest of the
world.
References
ARD/ZDF-Arbeitsgruppe Multimedia, 1999a. ARD/ZDF-online-studie 1999: Wird online
alltagsmedium? [ARD/ZDF online study: Is online becoming an everyday medium?].
Media Perspektiven 1999, Nr. 8, 388-409.
ARD/ZDF-Arbeitsgruppe Multimedia. (1999b). Nichtnutzer von online: Einstellungen und
zugangsbarrieren. Ergebnisse der ARD/ZDF-offline-studie 1999 [Online nonusers:
Attitudes and access barriers. Results of the ARD/ZDF offline study 1999]. Media
Perspektiven, 1999, Nr. 8, 415-422.
Bonfadelli, H. 2002. The Internet and knowledge gaps: A theoretical and empirical
investigation. European Journal of Communication, 17(1), 65-84.
Brosnan, M. J., 1998. The impact of computer anxiety and self-efficacy upon
performance. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 14, 223-234.
Bucy, E., & Newhagen, J. (Eds.), 2004. Media access: Social and psychological
dimensions of new technology use. London, LEA.
Castells, M., 1996. The information age: Economy, society and culture. Vol. I. The rise of
the network society. Oxford, England, Blackwell.
Castells, Manuel, 1998. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol.III: End
of Millennium. Malden MA. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers.
Cho, J., de Zúñiga, H., Rojas, H., & Shah, D., 2003. Beyond access: The digital divide
and Internet uses and gratifications. IT & Society, 1(4), 46-72.
Chua, S. L., Chen, D. T., & Wong, A.F.L. (1999). Computer anxiety and its correlates: A
meta-analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 15, 609-623.
de Haan, Jos, 2003. IT and social inequality in the Netherlands. IT & Society, 1(4), 2745.
de Haan, J., & Iedema, J. (in press). Models of access to the information society. New
Media & Society, 7.
Eurobarometer, 20002-2005. Standard Eurobarometer 56-63. Retrieved September 8,
2005, from http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/index_en.htm .
Finn, S., & Korukonda, A. R., 2004. Avoiding computers: Does personality play a role? In
E. Bucy & J. Newhagen (Eds.), Media access: Social and psychological dimensions of new
technology use (pp. 73-90). London: LEA.
Gunkel, D., 2003. Second thoughts: Toward a critique of the digital divide. New Media &
Society, 5(4), 499-522.
Hargittai, E.. 2002. The second-level digital divide: Differences in people’s online skills.
First Monday: Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet, 7(4). Retrieved August 31, 2004,
from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_4/hargittai/
Hargittai, E., 2003. The digital divide and what to do about it. In D. C. Jones (Ed.), The
new economy handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Retrieved August 31, 2004,
from http://www.princeton.edu/~eszter/research/c04-digitaldivide.html.
Hargittai, Esther, 2004. How Wide a Web? Social Inequality in the Digital Age. Ph.D.
Dissertation, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, Sociology Department.
Hirsch, F., 1976. The social limits to growth. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Horrigan, J., & Rainie, L., (2002a). Getting serious online: As Americans gain experience,
they pursue more serious activities. Washington DC: Pew Internetand American Life
Project. Retrieved August 28, 2004, from http//:www.pewinternet.org.
Horrigan, J., & Rainie, L., 2002b. The broadband difference: How online behavior
changes
with high-speed Internet connections. Washington DC: Pew Internet and American Life
Project. Retrieved August 28, 2004, from http//:www.pewinternet.org.
Howard, P., Rainie, L., & Jones, S.. 2001. Days and nights on the Internet: The impact of
a diffusing technology. In B. Wellman & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), The Internet in
everyday life (pp. 45-73). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Hudiburg, R. A., 1999. Preliminary investigation of computer stress and the big five
personality factors. Psychology Reports, 85, 473-480.
Katz, J. E., & Rice, R. E., 2002. Social consequences of Internet use, access,
involvement, and interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lenhart, A., Horrigan, J., Rainie, L., Allen, K., Boyce, A., Madden, M., et al., 2003. The
ever-shifting Internet population: A new look at Internet access and the digital divide.
Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved August 28, 2004,
from http//:www.pewinternet.org .
Lenhart, A., Fallows, D., & Horrigan, J., 2004. Content creation online. Washington, DC:
Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved August 28, 2004, from
http//:www.pewinternet.org.
Mason, S., & Hacker, K., 2003. Applying communication theory to digital divide research.
IT & Society, 5(5), 40-55.
Nahuis, R., & de Groot, H. , 2003. Rising skill premia: You ain’t seen nothing yet (CPB
Discussion Paper No. 20). The Hague, Netherlands: Centraal Plan Bureau, Netherlands
Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Retrieved February 7, 2004, from
http://ideas.repec.org/p/cpb/discus/20.html .
Norris, P., 2001. Digital divide, civic engagement, information poverty and the Internet
worldwide. Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press.
NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), (1995, July).
Falling through the Net: A survey of the “have nots” in rural and urban America.
Retrieved September 29, 2004, from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fallingthru.html
NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), 1998. Falling
through the Net II: New data on the digital divide. Retrieved September 29, 2004, from
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/
NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), 1999. Falling
through the Net: Defining the digital divide. Retrieved September 29, 2004, from
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/contents.html
NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), 2000. Falling
through the Net II: Toward digital inclusion. Retrieved September 29, 2004, from
htttp://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html
NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), 2002. A nation
online: How Americans are expanding their use of the Internet. Retrieved September 29,
2004, from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/index.html.
OECD, 2000. The Digital Divide: Diffusion and Use of ICT's. Paris, OECD.
OECD, 2001. Understanding the Digital Divide. Paris, OECD.
Park, Han W., 2002. The digital divide in South Korea: Closing and widening divides in
the 1990s. Electronic Journal of Communication/Revue de Communication Electronique,
12(1 & 2) Retrieved September 28, 2004, from http://www.cios.org/www/ejc.
CBS/SCP (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek/Sociaal-Cultureel Planbureau), 2001. ICTPilot 2001. CBS/SCP, Rijswijk, Netherlands.
Rawls, J., 1971. Theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rockwell, S., & Singleton, L. (2002). The effects of computer anxiety and communication
apprehension on the adoption and utilization of the Internet. Electronic Journal of
Communication/Revue de Communication Electronique, 12(1) Retrieved June 12, 2004,
from http://www.cios.org/www/ejc.
Rojas, V., Straubhaar, J., Roychowdhury, D., & Okur, O., 2004. Communities, cultural
capital and the digital divide. In E. Bucy & J. Newhagen (Eds.), Media access: Social and
psychological dimensions of new technology use (pp. 107-130). London: LEA.
SCP (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau), 2001. Trends in de tijd [Trends in time]. The
Hague, Netherlands, SCP.
Sen, A., 1985. Commodities and capabilities. Amsterdam, North-Holland.
Sen, A., 1992. Inequality reexamined. Oxford, England, Oxford University Press.
Stanley, L., 2001. Beyond access. Retrieved March 11, 2004, from
www.mediamanage.net/Beyond_Access.pdf .
Steyaert, J., 2000. Digitale vaardigheden: Geletterdheid in de informatiesamenleving
[Digital skills: Literacy in the information society]. The Hague, Netherlands, Rathenau
Instituut.
UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Communication Policy, 2001. The
UCLA Internet report 2001: Surveying the digital future, year two. Los Angeles: Author.
Retrieved March 2, 2004, from http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp
UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Communication Policy, 2003. The
UCLA Internet report: Surveying the digital future, year three. Los Angeles: Author.
Retrieved March 2, 2004, from http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/pages/internet-report.asp
United Nations Statistics Division, 2004. Millennium indicators database: Personal
Computers and Internet users per 100 population (ITU estimates). Retrieved March 11,
2004, from
http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_indicator_xrxx.asp?ind_code=48 .
van Dijk, Jan, 1999. The network society: Social aspects of new media. London, Sage
Publications.
van Dijk, Jan, 2000. Widening information gaps and policies of prevention. In K. Hacker
& J. van Dijk (Eds.), Digital democracy: Issues of theory and practice (pp. 166-183).
London: Sage Publications.
van Dijk, Jan, (2003). A framework for digital divide research. Electronic Journal of
Communication/Revue de Communication Electronique, 12(1). Retrieved September 30,
2004, from http://www.cios.org/getfile/vandijk_.
van Dijk, J.a.G.M., 2004. Divides in succession: Possession, skills, and use of new media
for societal participation. In E. Bucy & J. Newhagen (Eds.), Media access: Social and
psychological dimensions of new technology use (pp. 233-254). London, LEA.
van Dijk, Jan A.G.M., 2005. The Deepening Divide, Inequality in the Information Society.
Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks CA, London, New Delhi.
van Dijk, J., & Hacker, K., 2003. The digital divide as a complex and dynamic
phenomenon. Information Society, 19, 315-326.
van Dijk, Liset, J., de Haan, J., & Rijken, S., 2000. Digitalisering van de leefwereld: Een
onderzoek naar informatie en communicatietechnologie en sociale ongelijkheid
[Digitization of everyday life: A survey of information and communication technology and
social inequality]. The Hague, Netherlands: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Retrieved
June 25, 2004, from http://www.scp.nl/publicaties/boeken/905749518X.shtml .