Interactive Digital Television is mostly a matter of entertainment for developed countries, but bears great potential to narrow the digital divide in developing countries. The television’s return channel might become the family’s gate to the Information Society. For this to come true, however, digital receivers and return channel technologies must reach cost levels that enable mass penetration....

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions (e.g. e-health, telemedicine, e-education) are often viewed as vehicles to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban healthcare centres and to resolve shortcomings in the rural health sector. This study focused on factors perceived to influence the uptake and use of ICTs as e-health solutions in selected rural Eastern Cape healthc...

In this chapter, we examine how people of African descent are using an online discussion forum as a site for interrogating the existential question of “who am I?”. Contrary to the typical formulations of the digital divide as a measure of disparity in access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), we make a case for how and why ICTs are being effectively used to enable and advance...

In conjunction with the Creating Futures conference, the inaugural meeting of the National Indigenous Health and New Media Forum (NIHNMF--pronounced as 'nymph') was held at the Tanks Gallery in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. This paper describes the background to this innovative meeting of media minds. It also explores an emerging vision for addressing Indigenous health disparities through digi...

This paper presents a comparative study on digital divide between a region and its main metropolitan area. The exercise shows how barriers to technology access and usage may vary in terms of both nature and intensity. The paper also proposes a taxonomy of the different types of digital divides that may be present inside a region.

This study examined the relationship between home Internet access/parental support and student outcomes. Survey data were collected from 1,576 middle school students in China. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, independent-samples T-test, and regression analysis. Results indicate that students who had home Internet access reported higher scores than those without home Internet on al...

The near-pervasive introduction of ehealth systems, and the more recent implementation of systems intended for patient use offer patients the opportunity to participate in their own care. Unfortunately the design of these systems means that they may work better for "People Like Us" rather than for those on the wrong side of the 'digital divide'. This paper looks at the professional, practical a...