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The digital divide in the twenty-first century: An introduction
Poetics 34 (2006) 219–220 www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic
Editorial
The digital divide in the twenty-first century: An introduction The digital divide is still newsworthy, at least if the news is unexpected and unwelcome. Late one Friday afternoon in the autumn of 2005 I sent a press release to a major Flemish newspaper summarizing some results from a research project. Hoping for perhaps a column or two in the Monday edition, I was surprised to be woken from my bed early the next morning by a radio news journalist demanding a live telephone interview. The press release had gone straight to the front page as main headline. During the following week questions were asked in Parliament, I was asked to appear before a Parliamentary Commission, and I was even invited to discuss the results with Microsoft. The shocking news? That over 40% of Flemish adults had stated that they never use a computer. As a researcher familiar with the digital divide I was surprised by the furore; ‘why all the fuss’ I asked myself? The answer, I believe, is that journalists and (most) politicians inhabit a world where digital literacy is not only taken for granted but where life without such skills is almost inconceivable and this produces a curious myopia when it comes to perceiving the world(s) of others. The digital divide, like other forms of inequality such as poverty and lack of opportunity, only becomes fully apparent if and when you go looking for it (or as in the recent case of widespread riots among young immigrants in France, it comes looking for you). Our results had confronted politicians and the educated public with the fact that, despite confident millennial predictions of its inevitable and inexorable demise, the digital divide, like the poor, is still very much with us. Consequently, we make no apologies for presenting this special issue on a subject that, far from being passe´, continues to command the attention not only of politicians but also of academic researchers. The aim was to bring together a number of articles that would reflect current advances in the field. It is hoped that the result, which to a large extent doubtless reflects my own interests and priorities, will help to provide a basis upon which a new phase of digital divide research can be built. In the first article Jan van Dijk reviews the achievements and shortcomings of the digital divide research of the past five years. In it he stresses the importance of contextualizing the digital divide in relation to other forms of socio-economic inequality and, amongst others, he highlights lack of theoretical development as a major shortcoming of digital divide research. Another frequent criticism of digital divide research has been its relative lack of empirical studies based on largescale representative samples and so the other contributions to this volume, drawn from four different countries, were selected explicitly with redressing this shortcoming in view. In the 0304-422X/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2006.05.006
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Editorial / Poetics 34 (2006) 219–220
second article Jeremy Frees, Salvador Rivas and Eszter Hargittai employ data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to focus on Internet use among older adults. Their results strongly suggest that those manifesting earlier lower cognitive ability are much less well placed to reap the potential benefits of online tools unless digitally competent social support, in the form of a friend or family member, is available to them. In the third article Sara Nephew enlists U.S. Current Population Survey data to explore whether location of use limits or facilitates individual efforts to apply the Internet to beneficial activities. Her results confirm differences in Internet access point quality as a parameter of the digital divide and indicate that differences in locations of use can partly explain gaps in participation in some beneficial online activities. The fourth article, by Neil Selwyn, analyzes household survey data from 1001 adults in England and Wales, combined with 100 in-depth interviews among non- and low-users of digital applications. His results reinforce the view that rather than being a dichotomy between the haves and have-nots, the digital divide is made up of a complex hierarchy composed not only of structural inequalities but also of human agency and decision-making within the context of everyday life. The fifth article, by Jochen Peter and Patti Valkenburg, is based on multivariate analyses of data drawn from a sample of 749 Dutch adolescents. Their findings suggest that the emerging digital differentiation approach describes current digital divide phenomena more adequately than does the disappearing digital divide approach, at least in a country like The Netherlands where traditional socio-economic barriers to access have all but disappeared. Finally, Agnetha Broos and Keith Roe argue that the dominant focus in the literature on socio-demographics has led to a relative neglect of psychological factors as possible explanations for the digital divide. Their analyses, based on a representative sample of 1145 Flemish adolescents, provide support for this view although they stress the importance of combining models and insights from sociology and psychology rather than treating them as exclusive ‘either/or’ perspectives. Earlier in this introduction I cited lack of theoretical development and large-scale empirical studies as perhaps the most serious shortcomings to be found within the corpus of digital divide research. While I hope and trust that this special issue has contributed to redressing the latter weakness, it must be admitted that it has contributed less to redressing the former. To be sure the articles presented here abound with theoretical implications for future research, but the work of developing an adequate general theory of the digital divide remains. Keith Roe* Catholic University Leuven, Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, E. Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium *Tel.: +32 16 32 32 20; fax: +32 16 32 33 12 E-mail address: [email protected]
Editorial
The digital divide in the twenty-first century: An introduction The digital divide is still newsworthy, at least if the news is unexpected and unwelcome. Late one Friday afternoon in the autumn of 2005 I sent a press release to a major Flemish newspaper summarizing some results from a research project. Hoping for perhaps a column or two in the Monday edition, I was surprised to be woken from my bed early the next morning by a radio news journalist demanding a live telephone interview. The press release had gone straight to the front page as main headline. During the following week questions were asked in Parliament, I was asked to appear before a Parliamentary Commission, and I was even invited to discuss the results with Microsoft. The shocking news? That over 40% of Flemish adults had stated that they never use a computer. As a researcher familiar with the digital divide I was surprised by the furore; ‘why all the fuss’ I asked myself? The answer, I believe, is that journalists and (most) politicians inhabit a world where digital literacy is not only taken for granted but where life without such skills is almost inconceivable and this produces a curious myopia when it comes to perceiving the world(s) of others. The digital divide, like other forms of inequality such as poverty and lack of opportunity, only becomes fully apparent if and when you go looking for it (or as in the recent case of widespread riots among young immigrants in France, it comes looking for you). Our results had confronted politicians and the educated public with the fact that, despite confident millennial predictions of its inevitable and inexorable demise, the digital divide, like the poor, is still very much with us. Consequently, we make no apologies for presenting this special issue on a subject that, far from being passe´, continues to command the attention not only of politicians but also of academic researchers. The aim was to bring together a number of articles that would reflect current advances in the field. It is hoped that the result, which to a large extent doubtless reflects my own interests and priorities, will help to provide a basis upon which a new phase of digital divide research can be built. In the first article Jan van Dijk reviews the achievements and shortcomings of the digital divide research of the past five years. In it he stresses the importance of contextualizing the digital divide in relation to other forms of socio-economic inequality and, amongst others, he highlights lack of theoretical development as a major shortcoming of digital divide research. Another frequent criticism of digital divide research has been its relative lack of empirical studies based on largescale representative samples and so the other contributions to this volume, drawn from four different countries, were selected explicitly with redressing this shortcoming in view. In the 0304-422X/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2006.05.006
220
Editorial / Poetics 34 (2006) 219–220
second article Jeremy Frees, Salvador Rivas and Eszter Hargittai employ data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to focus on Internet use among older adults. Their results strongly suggest that those manifesting earlier lower cognitive ability are much less well placed to reap the potential benefits of online tools unless digitally competent social support, in the form of a friend or family member, is available to them. In the third article Sara Nephew enlists U.S. Current Population Survey data to explore whether location of use limits or facilitates individual efforts to apply the Internet to beneficial activities. Her results confirm differences in Internet access point quality as a parameter of the digital divide and indicate that differences in locations of use can partly explain gaps in participation in some beneficial online activities. The fourth article, by Neil Selwyn, analyzes household survey data from 1001 adults in England and Wales, combined with 100 in-depth interviews among non- and low-users of digital applications. His results reinforce the view that rather than being a dichotomy between the haves and have-nots, the digital divide is made up of a complex hierarchy composed not only of structural inequalities but also of human agency and decision-making within the context of everyday life. The fifth article, by Jochen Peter and Patti Valkenburg, is based on multivariate analyses of data drawn from a sample of 749 Dutch adolescents. Their findings suggest that the emerging digital differentiation approach describes current digital divide phenomena more adequately than does the disappearing digital divide approach, at least in a country like The Netherlands where traditional socio-economic barriers to access have all but disappeared. Finally, Agnetha Broos and Keith Roe argue that the dominant focus in the literature on socio-demographics has led to a relative neglect of psychological factors as possible explanations for the digital divide. Their analyses, based on a representative sample of 1145 Flemish adolescents, provide support for this view although they stress the importance of combining models and insights from sociology and psychology rather than treating them as exclusive ‘either/or’ perspectives. Earlier in this introduction I cited lack of theoretical development and large-scale empirical studies as perhaps the most serious shortcomings to be found within the corpus of digital divide research. While I hope and trust that this special issue has contributed to redressing the latter weakness, it must be admitted that it has contributed less to redressing the former. To be sure the articles presented here abound with theoretical implications for future research, but the work of developing an adequate general theory of the digital divide remains. Keith Roe* Catholic University Leuven, Leuven School for Mass Communication Research, E. Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium *Tel.: +32 16 32 32 20; fax: +32 16 32 33 12 E-mail address: [email protected]