Digital Divide and Social Media: Connectivity Doesn’t End the Digital Divide, Skills Do

Digital Divide, Social Divide, Paradigmatic Divide

The digital divide is nothing else than the reflection of the social divide in the digital world. The use of ICT for human development does offer opportunities to reduce the social divide for individual beings or communities; yet there exists a series of obstacles to overcome. The very existence of an infrastructure for connectivity is only the first obstacle, although it often receives an excl...

Social Epistemology and the Digital Divide

The digital divide refers to inequalities in access to information technology. One of the main reasons why the digital divide is an important issue is that access to information technology has a tremendous impact on people’s ability to acquire knowledge. According to Alvin Goldman (1999), the project of social epistemology is to identify policies and practices that have good epistemic consequen...

The Digital Divide and Social Inclusion

Do Insecure Systems Increase Global Digital Divide?

Without doubt information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to change the world to varying degrees from one place to another, depending on a number of technological and socio-economical factors such as: physical access to technology, education, geographical locations, language and gender (Warschauer, 2002; Chen & Wellman, 2003; Nahon, 2006). As a result of these factors the rates o...

Remapping the Digital Divide

A phrase with great urgency a few years ago, “the digital divide” now is on the sidelines. As the federal government renewed its commitment to marketplace solutions in telecommunications and information technology issues under the Bush administration, the idea of a digital divide faced criticism from FCC Chairman Powell for being an ill-advised version of the “Mercedes divide” in the United Sta...