Bibliography - ICT4D – G3077 Benjamin Parkes

Defining the Digital Divide: An Annotated Bibliography.

By Benjamin Parkes

This annotated bibliography covers 31 of the main references related to the digital divide in 2005. It looks into books, journals, websites, newspaper articles and reports.

I feel the topic of the digital divide is very current, and effect’s everyone in the world today, as people on each side cannot contact each other as efficiently as they should be able to. The references below take in all aspects of the digital divide from the developed and developing world, as it’s important to look at the differences in how it is defined when related to a specific context. There are many divides that exist under the canopy of the term, such as education, economic class, age and gender differences. All of these have to be assessed individually in order to get to the true picture of the problems.

By reducing the divide in the developing world, it should have a big impact on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which is a primary concern for the United Nations at the moment. I feel that having better access to Information, Communication, Technologies (ICT’s) in areas such as this, it will dramatically help in achieving the goals, so must be looked as one of the main solutions.

The bibliography has been grouped into sections according to the category of the content, for example all the books are at the top, then this carries in into websites. All possible information was included in the reference boxes at the top, and everything was correct at the time of either viewing or writing.

Category / Book / 1
Title / Virtual Inequality – Beyond the Digital Divide
Author / Mossberger, Tolbert & Stansbury
Publisher / Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C
Year / 2003
This book looks at the inequalities in the American society through the Digital Divide. It tries to look at the problems, to get a better idea of why it has come about.
The authors say the term digital divide has been used to describe the patterns of unequal access to information technology based on income, race, ethnicity, gender, age and geography that surfaced during the mid-1990’s. They start out by trying to redefine the term digital divide, from that of purely access to say that lack of ICT knowledge is just as important. So they promote an idea of four divides, that of an access divide, a skills divide, an economic opportunity divide, and a democratic divide.
The authors go on to comment on how the problem should have greater input from government (Bush Administration), and are not the fault of the individual.
Category / Book / 2
Title / Gender and Computers – Understanding the Digital Divide
Author / Cooper & Weaver
Publisher / Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ
Year / 2003
This book provides an American perspective on the digital divide with added emphasis on how Women and girls are being left behind as the country tries to overcome the difficulties caused by it.
The authors say that the digital divide is a term that has been used to refer to the gap between those who have access to technology and those that do not; between those who have the expertise and training to utilize technology and those who do not.
They highlight the growing concerns over the growing gap between whites and blacks with regards to computer ownership quoting figures saying that from 1994 to 1998 the gap widened by 7%, but both areas experienced a growth.
Category / Book / 3
Title / Digital Divide – Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide
Author / Norris
Publisher / Cambridge University Press, New York.
Year / 2001
In this book the author is getting at the idea that the Internet, and its huge growth in recent years is exacerbating the inequalities between rich and poor. It aims to look at Internet use in 179 nations around the globe, stating that an obvious divide exists between industrialised and developing nations.
Norris argues that the digital divide is a multidimensional phenomenon taking in three aspects of, a global divide, a social divide and the democratic divide.
Category / Book / 4
Title / Divided by Information? The digital divide and the implications of the new meritocracy
Author / Jupp
Publisher / Demos Publishing, London.
Year / 2001
Jupp wants to dispel the myth that the digital divide is only concerned with the price of equipment, and therefore the access to it. He said that the real price is falling, and that there is a wider set of issues concerning content, skills, uses and the wider social consequences. He gives a clever phrase of in the longer run it is exclusion by information that matters most, rather than the exclusion from information.
Category / Book / 5
Title / Bridging the Digital Divide: Technology, Community, and Public Policy
Author / Servon
Publisher / Blackwell Publishers
Year / 2002
Servon is looking at issues regarding unequal access to information technologies, looking at the severity, and discussing the future impacts maybe if the digital divide is not tackled. It is focussed on American policies, on all levels from the federal to local level initiatives.
Seeking to redefine what the digital divide means, Servon accepts that there is a divide through access to computers, but argues that this is diminishing, and now the real problem is the divide between those that possess the resources, education and skills to reap the full benefits of the information society. Gaps still remain between different racial and ethnic groups, people with and without disabilities, single and dual parent families, the old and the young, and people with differing levels of income and education.
Category / Book / 6
Title / The ICT Revolution: Productivity Differences and the Digital Divide
Author / Cohen
Publisher / Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Year / 2004
Cohen takes the view that the ideal of the Internet and ICT’s delivering a frictionless economy without recessions is, at least for the time being, dead. He looks at why some countries seem to have more resources in place to gain the best benefits from ICT’s, and suggests that the naïve approach that the Internet views e-commerce as a means to achieve a perfect world of competition, by eliminating the barriers into rich countries markets will not follow through. He uses the comparison of the nineteenth century, when technology forced a concentration of economic activities, rather than dispersion.
Category / Book / 7
Title / Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality
Author / Woolgar S
Publisher / Oxford University Press
Year / 2002
Woolgar starts with saying that the rate of growth in Internet users it is hard to give accurate figures, as they are so soon out of date. But what are consistent in the growth are the uneven patterns of take-up across social groups both within and across national boundaries. The term came about in the mid-90’s by the publication Falling through the net in the USA. This showed the extent to which is what happening, and even the most recent report in 2002, showed significant inequalities of access based upon gender, ethnicity, urban/rural location and age. He says that the issue is a real concern for most governments, but trying to solve the issue is very difficult. The UK government have looked into using mediums that a larger percentage of the population have, such as digital televisions and mobile phones, but at the time of publication these were still on going.
Category / Book / 8
Title / The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth?
Author / Compaine B
Publisher / MIT Press
Year / 2001
Compaine takes the opposing view to Woolgar and believes that the digital divide has been and gone, or at the least slowly fading away. He puts this rapid diffusion of Internet technology down to steadily decreasing costs in use, and steadily increasing ease of use. He says that getting access is not the divide that is the main issue; it is of finding a suitable speed (i.e. broadband) in order to view all relevant material, and get access to larger files.
Category / Website / 9
Name / Bridges – Spanning the International Digital Divide
URL / www.bridges.org
Date Accessed / 1st December 2005
Bridges is an international non-profit organisation that promotes the effective use of ICT in the developing world to reduce poverty and improve people’s lives. They aim to tackle the obstacles to effective ICT in order to use throughout society and work with initiatives focussed on socio-economic developments to help them use ICT.
They define the divide as the wide division between those who have access to ICT and are using it effectively, and those who do not. They are concerned as ICT’s are quickly becoming the foundation of our societies and economics, causing the people who don’t have access are denied the options open to those that do. Most often the people without access are located in the developing world, or in disadvantages communities elsewhere.
Category / Website / 10
Name / Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopaedia – Digital Divide.
URL / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
Date Accessed / 2nd December 2005
Last Update / 30th November 2005
Probably the best website to start at when looking for an accurate definition on the digital divide. They say it is a social/political issue referring to the socio-economic gap between communities that have access to computers and the Internet and those who do not. It also refers to the gaps in peoples ability to use ICT’s effectively, as a result from differing levels of literacy and technical skills, as well as those who have access to quality, useful digital content and those who do not. The term became popular in the late 90’s by concerned parties, such as scholars, policy makers and advocacy groups.
Category / Website / 11
Name / Glossary and cross reference Index – FRAW website (Free Range Activism Website)
URL / http://www.fraw.org.uk/library/005/gn-irt/glossary.html
Date Accessed / 2nd December 2005
Last Update / Un-known, but presumed recent.
This website is a free project designed to bring information to people under a free documentation license. Which makes it free to print, distribute, modify and re-distribute. They again start describing the growing gap, or social exclusion between those that have access to the new services of the information society, and those who do not. The following reasons are given.
·  Access to education or training.
·  Lack of money to buy the required equipment.
·  No access due to problems obtaining the required communication links or services needed to get on-line.
This is from a US perspective, saying that the divide is currently viewed as a side issue when compared to other problems such as poverty and education.
Category / Website / 12
Name / Tackling the ‘digital divide’
URL / http://www.flexibility.co.uk/issues/debates/divide.htm
Date Accessed / 6th December 2005
Last Update / Un-known, but presumed recent.
This article gives the advantages of ICT such as new forms of enterprise, new types of skills, new sources of wealth and new forms of social interaction, and defines the divide as those who cannot or do not have access to new technologies. This section are therefore ‘socially excluded’, being on the wrong side of the divide. Some examples are given such as TOPAZ (Telecommunications Open Partnerships of Arizona), which is creating broadband in rural Arizona. Then they list a lot of DfEE (Department for Education and Employment) projects. A great resource for good real life examples.
Category / Website / 13
Name / Youth for technology foundation.
URL / http://www.youthfortechnology.org/frames.html
Date Accessed / 6th December 2005
Last Update / Un-known, but presumed recent.
This foundation aims to ‘uplift rural communities in developing countries by providing educational resources, technology resources and training to empower youth to improve their lives.’ They see that the best way of moving forward is through using ICT to give people the information, and the resources to access it.
As a website there is not much in the way of background on the digital divide, just information about what they are doing, so is a good point of contact if looking for real life experiences.
Category / Website / 14
Name / The Digital Divide is Rubbish
URL / http://www.newstatesman.com/200105140018
Date Accessed / 10th December 2005
Last Update / 14th May 2001
In this article Crabtree argues that this is an exclusion we should not be worrying about, and it is nothing that we haven’t seen before. He says that it is impossible to pin down, and therefore impossible to create a plan. The basis for his argument is that we have seen a divide in mobile telephones ownership, as well as most electronic gadgets, and it is simple demand/supply economics that dictates these scenarios rather than what the government can do.
Category / Website / 15
Name / The Digital Divide – Overcoming the Digital Divide: Internauts and Internots.
URL / http://www.rogerdarlington.co.uk/digitaldivide.html
Date Accessed / 10th December 2005
Last Update / 10th July 2002
This is a text of a presentation made to a ‘Unions and the Internet’ conference which was held at the Trade Union Congress in London on the 12th May 2001. They say that in fact there is no digital divide, as it is too simplistic, there are many divides, which all require different solutions. The different divides are: class, region, age, gender, race, nation, disability, speed of access, frequency of use and sophistication of use.