Encyclopedia of Science and

Technology Communication
Digital Divide

Contributors: Jacob Groshek

Editors: Susanna Hornig Priest
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication
Chapter Title: "Digital Divide"
Pub. Date: 2010
Access Date: December 25, 2015
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412959209
Online ISBN: 9781412959216
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959216.n81
Print pages: 224-225
 ©2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
Dhaka University
©2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959216.n81
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

Page 3 of 6 Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Communication: Digital Divide
Dhaka University
©2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge

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 [p. 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.

In other words, instead of promoting a more equitable social arena with more
opportunity for socioeconomic, political, and cultural unification, the unequal distribution
of digital communication technologies can actually contribute to the maintenance
and even the exacerbation of social hierarchies. Moreover, the effects of the digital
divide can be felt across social levels, and it is evolving and ongoing—that is, even
in the instance that an individual, region, or nation can catch up to a certain level of
digital technology deployment, the rapidity with which new innovations are reached
nevertheless renders them technological laggards who are unable to fully engage with
their more advanced counterparts. Such a situation has been particularly evident during
the transition to broadband Internet and Web 2.0 applications where only a relatively
small portion of the online population can actually make full use of the Internet's most
participatory and perhaps most efficacious functions.

Nearly all scholars and policymakers agree that the digital divide needs to be narrowed
on all social levels. Closing those gaps, however, remains a challenging task. In
many cases, ICTs are most likely to benefit individuals, groups, and nations who have
the resources to adopt them relatively early in their diffusion curve—so long as the
particular technology, service, or device is also deemed by other individuals and groups
to offer similar relative advantages. Investment in unproven technologies, though, is
often fraught with risks and realistically may be undertaken only by those individuals
or groups with a certain level of resources and expertise in existing technologies. In
some cases, communication technologies have been reported to enable leapfrogging—

Page 4 of 6 Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Communication: Digital Divide
Dhaka University
©2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge

a phenomenon that suggests that stages of technological, financial, and human

investment can be bypassed during the development process. One such example is
the relatively widespread implementation of cellular phones in countries where little to
no landline phone infrastructure existed, but few other examples have been empirically
observed. This apparent lack of examples has led scholars to consider leapfrogging a
largely theoretical idea, with few practical applications.

Research has also demonstrated that simply providing access to digital media
technologies is unlikely to entirely resolve any existing digital divides. This is because
not all users are able to complete the same functions or use the technology to the
same capacity as other, more experienced users. Thus, there is evidence of a second-
level digital divide even among populations that already have access to and use digital
communicative technologies. Precisely because the digital divide operates both across
as well as within social and technological levels, ICTs still, paradoxically, threaten to
fragment and disem-power those individuals, groups, and nations that exist as being
digital have-nots from those with the technological, financial, and personal resources to
tap the remarkable potential of modern digital media technologies.

JacobGroshek

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412959216.n81
See also

• Diffusion of Innovations
• Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
• Technological Determinism
• Technological Literacy

Further Readings

Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet
worldwide . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York: The Free Press.

Page 5 of 6 Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Communication: Digital Divide
Dhaka University
©2010 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge

Sunstein, C. R. (2007). http://Republic.com 2.0 . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2006). The network society: Social aspects of new media .
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Page 6 of 6 Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Communication: Digital Divide