Digital Divide

The term digital divide describes the uneven distribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) in society. This encompasses differences both in access (first-level digital divide) and usage (secondlevel digital divide) of computers and the Internet between (a) industrialized and developing countries (global divide), (b) various socioeconomic groups in single nation-states (social divide), and (c) different kinds of users with regard to their political engagement on the Web (democratic divide). In general, these differences are believed to reinforce social inequalities and to cause a persisting information or knowledge gap amid those people having access to and using the new media (“haves”) and those people living without (“have-nots”).