Media Updates

Digital Divide

By Leslie Regan Shade
October 21, 2005

The term “digital divide” reached popularity in the mid-1990s as a way to describe the differences and disparities between those who have access to the Internet and those who don’t. Initially, the term was used only in the context of access to computers and telecommunication services, but later definitions were broader, including access to the social infrastructure. This sort of access included access to education (where one measure was literacy rates) and content (where researchers considered the ability to produce as well as to consume information). A variety of socio-demographic characteristics—including income, education, gender, race, ethnicity, age, linguistic background, and geographic location (rural versus. urban)—have been identified as facilitating (or inhibiting) access.

Access to the Internet has been found to be inequitable among different communities. Most likely to suffer from the inequities are those less well favoured in terms of education, class, and income levels; the disabled and visible minorities; and those residing in inner-city and rural communities. These various digital divides have been the focus of much recent policy attention by governments.

Pippa Norris, in her book Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide (2001), describes several dimensions to the digital divide: the social divide (the gap between the “information-rich” and “information-poor” in nations); the global divide (the gap between industrialized and developing countries); and the democratic divide (those who use the Internet for civic participation versus those that are passive consumers of Internet resources).

Measuring the Digital Divide

Various studies—by governments, industry groups, and non-governmental organizations—have attempted to measure the digital divide. The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) produced the first high-profile study in 1995, with the release of Falling through the Net. The study measured household telephone, computer, and Internet penetration rates to determine who owned telephones and personal computers and who accessed the Internet at home, and it revealed that access was related to socioeconomic and geographic factors, with the information have-nots disproportionately found in rural and central cities. NTIA’s 1999 study, Falling through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, revealed that while more Americans are accessing the Internet, significant discrepancies in access exist, and some have widened considerably. Race is a factor, as more African-Americans and Hispanics are less likely to be connected anywhere compared with whites at home. Education is also a factor, as those with a college degree are more than 16 times as likely to have home Internet access as those with an elementary-school degree. Income is another factor, as high-income urban households are more than 20 times as likely as rural, low-income households to have Internet access. Another factor is marital status, as children in dual-parent white households are nearly twice as likely to have the Internet at home as children in white, single-parent households.

NTIA’s 2000 report, Toward Digital Inclusion, looked at individual access, household access to high-speed services (such as DSL, or digital subscriber lines), and access for people with disabilities. Overall, NTIA concluded, digital inclusion is advancing rapidly among most groups of Americans, regardless of income, education, race/ethnicity, location, age, or gender. Further, those who were previously not connected are now making significant gains, particularly across education and gender lines. However, though computer ownership and Internet access are rising rapidly for most groups, in some cases the digital divide remains the same or has expanded slightly. This is especially the case for people with disabilities, for single-parent households, and for Blacks and Hispanics. Phil Howard, Lee Rainie, and Steve Jones (2001), reporting for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, reiterate these studies, describing how Americans are “incorporating Internet tools into their daily lives,” with many reporting “substantial benefits from being connected” (18).

In Canada, studies conducted by Statistics Canada on the digital divide in this country have come to conclusions similar to those reached in the U.S.: access is determined by socio-economics—on income, education, geography, gender, and age (Dickinson, 1999a, b). In his report, The Dual Digital Divide, conducted for HRDC, Andrew Reddick (2000) examines the digital divide and concludes that it is a complex phenomenon that involves not only users and nonusers, but two groups of nonusers: those who are not able to connect because of socioeconomic particularities and those who have opted not to connect because they are simply not interested. In his follow-up report, Reddick reiterates the necessity to reconceptualize the digital divide as a social divide, and to “incorporate the importance of the integration of information and communication technologies with other skills and activities in people’s daily lives” (2001, 14).

Digital Divide Programs and Policies

In North America, efforts to ameliorate the digital divide have concentrated on setting up community access points in public spaces, such as schools and libraries. Canada has several funding programs to create Internet access in such public spaces and community access points in rural and remote areas, although whether or not this funding – under Industry Canada’s Connecting Canadians Agenda – will be maintained is unknown now. In developing countries, international organizations are making efforts to decrease the digital gap.

A variety of public-sector and nonprofit policy initiatives have been initiated to fix the digital divide, through technology acquisition, education, training, and lifelong learning. In the U.S., the Telecommunications Act of 1996 directs the Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) to implement a funding mechanism—the E-rate—to bring Internet
technology to public schools and libraries. Corporations (including Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard, AOL/Time-Warner) have established foundations that help provide Internet access to local communities, typically through donations of used equipment and training.

Connecting Canada

The goal of the federal Connecting Canadians agenda is to make Canada “the most connected nation on earth.” Led by Industry Canada, the agenda consists of the School Net, Community Access Program (CAP, Urban CAP), VolNet, and LibraryNet programs. More recent federal and provincial programs have pursued related goals, for instance the Community Learning Networks (CLN) in the Office of Learning Technologies, HRDC.
But, as Vanda Rideout (2002) points out, important questions need to be asked about the CAP and CLN programs. “What happens if sustainability funding is impossible to achieve at the community level? What will happen to the connected communities if long-term sustainable government funding does not occur? What will happen to communities that have to unplug?” Rideout says that a focus on individual household access detracts from understanding what really happens in communities. “It will require a research approach that takes into consideration the political, economic, and social relations of the region as well as the community. Research questions need to identify partners and community organizations, the government programs, the community social needs . . . Community-specific digital-divide problems need to be identified. And government access programs need to be scrutinized to see if they do help overcome digital divide problems in the short as well as the long term” (ibid.).

References
Dickinson, Paul, and Jonathan Ellison. (1999a). “Getting Connected or Staying Unplugged: The Growing Use of Computer Communications Services.” Statistics Canada Service Indicators—1st Quarter: 2–19.

Dickinson, Paul, and George Sciadas. (1999b). “Canadians Connected.” Science and Technology Redesign Project. Canadian Economic Observer 3: 1–22. Catalogue 11-010-XPB.

Howard, Philip E. N., Lee Rainie, and Steve Jones. (November 2001). Days and Nights on the Internet: The Impact of a Diffusing Technology. American Behavioral Scientist 45, no. 3: 383– 404.

Norris, Pippa. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge University Press.
Reddick, Andrew, Christian Boucher, and Manon Groseilliers. (2001). Rethinking the Information Highway: Rethinking the Dual Digital Divide. Ottawa: Human Resources
Development Canada. http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/digital/rethink/cover.htm

Reddick, Andrew. (2000). The Dual Digital Divide: The Information Highway in Canada. Ottawa: Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

Rideout, Vanda. (2002). Canadians Connected and Unplugged: Public Access to the Internet and the Digital Divide. In Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest, ed. Michael McCauley. M.E. Sharpe.

Rideout, Vanda. (2000). Public Access to the Internet and the Canadian Digital Divide.
Canadian Journal of Information and Library Sciences 25, nos. 2/3.

U.S. Government NTIA studies