Digital Divide

Digital divide generally refers to the relative advantage individuals or groups of people gain over others as the result of their access to and use of communicative technologies, such as the Internet. This gap—or divide—is considered digital largely because many technological advances over the last half of the 20th century have been based on digital, as opposed to analog, technology. While some scholars have limited use of the term digital divide specifically to Internet diffusion and access, there are many who conceptualize being digital as including a wide variety of other information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as cellular phones, satellite television receivers, and personal computers. As these technologies were initially developed, there was little concern that they might contribute to the stratification of societies principally because they were cost prohibitive. More recently, however, it has become apparent that digital communication devices can be economically mass produced and distributed to a vast number of individuals—along with relevant knowledge and skill sets.

It has been well established, most notably by Everett Rogers, that innovations are typically diffused in an S-shaped curve where the number of adopters continues to grow so long as a relative advantage is perceived. Crucially, though, digital media technologies were not uniformly available or accepted in all sectors of national and international populations at equivalent rates due to economic, technological, political, and cultural factors. As a result of disparate adoption rates, a cleavage developed and then widened between digital haves and have-nots. It is important to note that the effects of the digital divide reach far beyond the actual diffusion of the innovations themselves. Most scholars now agree that technologies, digital or otherwise, are value-free and should be viewed as deterministic. This is to say that no technology is inherently good or bad or democratic or capitalistic. Rather, these and any other moral characteristics exist in the individuals and the crucial uses they make of communication technologies. In the case of the digital divide, the unequal diffusion of digital communication technologies often reinforces socioeconomic, political, and cultural chasms precisely because of the different uses that individuals make of these technologies.

Equally important are the ways in which the digital divide operates on a number of different social levels. First, there is an easily observable individual level digital divide. Here, individuals who have access and are able to harness the advantages of digital technologies contribute to their own socioeconomic advancement above other individuals with less access to digital technologies or who have merely lower levels of technology literacy. Second, intrastate digital divides are increasingly apparent among populations within different countries such that entire regions are technologically behind the diffusion curve of the rest of the population. This situation typically increases the economic and cultural distance of such regions (such as more rural areas) from other areas of the nation. Third, interstate digital divides have emerged across different countries that have high [Page 224]and low levels of digital technology diffusion. This particular development positions less developed countries as even less able to compete equally in the globalized marketplace because of the very same limitations in resources and infrastructure that had already hindered their development.

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