An Econometric Analysis of the Sociodemographic Topology of the Digital Divide in Europe

Introducing an econometric approach to quantify the digital divide, this article presents a new method to facilitate crossnational and in-depth sectional analyses of the digital divide within a consistent framework. It examines the sociodemographic topology of the digital divide in an extensive crossnational analysis covering six sociodemographic factors and twenty-five countries. The findings contradict in part the conclusions of previous research. Although there are differences between the social groups, not all of the tested segmentation factors mark major fault lines of the digital divide. The notions of a gender gap, an income divide, and a divide between urban and rural areas are rejected because between-group disparity proves to be only minor in comparison to overall inequality. However, education, age, and main vocational activity do indeed mark digital boundaries in many of the observed countries.     

A Multidimensional Analysis of the Disability Digital Divide: Some Evidence for Internet Use

Over the last few years, information and communication technologies have become an essential part of daily life, affecting education, employment, and leisure, among other activities. Nonetheless, many individuals still reap few or no benefits from these technologies, and there are resilient gaps in their use. Within this larger context, the authors examine the Internet digital divide between people with and without disabilities from a multidimensional approach. Rather than analyzing the gap in terms of “haves” and “have-nots,” a range of Internet-related dimensions—affordability, motivation and attitudes, skills, usage, and others—is taken into account.     

利用政府竞争情报解决数字鸿沟问题的若干思考

随着经济社会的发展和新技术利用程度的差异,欠发达地区在信息资源的获得和利用方面与发达地区存在很大的差距,从而阻碍了欠发达地区的经济发展。欠发达地区政府要充分认识到解决数字鸿沟的重要性,分析数字鸿沟产生的原因,开展竞争情报工作缩小与发达地区的数字鸿沟,促进本地区经济社会发展。     

国外二级鸿沟研究综述

目前,国外学界对二级鸿沟问题的研究十分关注,已取得不少研究成果.文章对国外围绕二级鸿沟展开的相关研究进行了总结,具体包括二级鸿沟的提出过程、二级鸿沟的含义,二级鸿沟的形成原因及解决措施等,并分析了二级鸿沟的研究意义.     

The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon

The purpose of this article is to propose a fruitful analytical framework for data supposedly related to the concept of the so-called "digital divide." The extent and the nature of this divide depend on the kind of access defined. Considering the possession of hardware, growing divides among different categories of income, employment, education, age, and ethnicity can be proved to have existed in the 1980s and 1990s according to official American and Dutch statistics. If only by effects of saturation, these gaps will more or less close. However, it is shown that differential access of skills and usage is likely to increase. The growth of a usage gap is projected. Multivariate analyses of Dutch official statistics reveal the striking effect of age and gender as compared to education. The usage gap is related to the evolution of the information and network society. Finally, policy perspectives are discussed.     

Consumer Benefits of Public Services Over FTTH in Japan: Comparative Analysis of Provincial and Urban Areas by Using Discrete Choice Experiment

As the rapid development of broadband Internet access services continues, particularly fiber to the home (FTTH) services, the digital divide between provincial and urban areas is becoming a big social issue in Japan. We classify the issue into two problems: access to high-speed Internet, and service utilization of high-speed Internet access. We focus on the latter problem by quantitatively and qualitatively investigating whether a digital divide problem exists based on Internet service utilization. Consequently, we discover that willingness to pay (WTP) for public services over FTTH is almost identical between provincial and urban areas. Furthermore, territorial digital broadcasting over FTTH accounts for a large part of WTP in provincial areas, while tele-working and tele-education are also important as public services over FTTH in urban areas.     

The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon

The purpose of this article is to propose a fruitful analytical framework for data supposedly related to the concept of the so-called "digital divide." The extent and the nature of this divide depend on the kind of access defined. Considering the possession of hardware, growing divides among different categories of income, employment, education, age, and ethnicity can be proved to have existed in the 1980s and 1990s according to official American and Dutch statistics. If only by effects of saturation, these gaps will more or less close. However, it is shown that differential access of skills and usage is likely to increase. The growth of a usage gap is projected. Multivariate analyses of Dutch official statistics reveal the striking effect of age and gender as compared to education. The usage gap is related to the evolution of the information and network society. Finally, policy perspectives are discussed.     

数字鸿沟的成因、测度、影响及弥合方法

从数字鸿沟的形成原因、测度、影响及弥合方法四个角度,梳理国内外学者对数字鸿沟的研究与贡献,并发现数字鸿沟是一个需要全面认识的现象,未来应着重对数字鸿沟的形成原因及测度进行研究。     

At the Intersection of the Digital Divide and the Knowledge Gap: Do Knowledge Domains and Measures Matter?

This study reports on knowledge gain, examined through three separate measures (free recall, comprehension and recognition) among high- and low-education groups who used two types of news media (newspaper vs. online) to consume two kinds of news (public affairs vs. entertainment). Results (n = 123) confirm the knowledge gap and validate concerns about the digital divide. Yet three different knowledge acquisition measures generated dissimilar findings: strong education effects for free recall, strong media format effects for recognition, and strong interaction effects between education and media format for comprehension. The implications of these inconsistencies are considered for measuring knowledge gaps in future research.     

Gaps and Bits: Conceptualizing Measurements for Digital Divide/s

Three arguments are raised in this article with regard to the indices used to measure the digital divide. First, I criticize policymakers who rely on simplistic measures of the digital divide, at the expense of a thoughtful analysis of (1) the purpose of the tool, (2) the level of observation, and (3) the method of approaching the data. Second, I argue that networks and associated technologies are not neutral artifacts but are political and social spaces in their structure as well as in their content levels. Accordingly, we need to factor in the context as an important actor in conceptualizing and measuring the digital divide. Third, two general types of indices are used for the measurement of the digital divide(s): focused monotopical indices and comprehensive indices. Monotopical indices are more widely available, while comprehensive ones are rare. I argue that policymakers need to promote comprehensive indices over monotopical indices. Finally, I present a conceptual definition of the digital divide and a framework for developing a comprehensive index to measure it.     

The digital marketing skills gap: Developing a Digital Marketer Model for the communication industries

Scholarly literature suggests digital marketing skills gaps in industry, but these skills gaps are not clearly identified. The research aims to specify any digital marketing skills gaps encountered by professionals working in communication industries. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 20 communication industry professionals. A focus group followed, testing the rigour of the data.     

Information Societies or “ICT Equipment Societies?” Measuring the Digital Information-Processing Capacity of a Society in Bits and Bytes

The digital divide is conventionally measured in terms of information and communication technology (ICT) equipment diffusion, which comes down to counting the number of computers or phones, among other devices. This article fine-tunes these approximations by estimating the amount of digital information that is stored, communicated, and computed by these devices. The installed stock of ICT equipment in the consumer segment is multiplied with its corresponding technological performance, resulting in the “installed technological capacity” for storage (in bits), bandwidth (in bits per second), and computational power (in computations per second). This leads to new insights. Despite the rapidly decreasing digital equipment divide, there is an increasing gap in terms of information-processing capacity. It is shown that in 1996 the average inhabitant of the industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had a capacity of 49 kibps more than its counterpart from Latin America and the Caribbean. Ten years later, this gap widened to 577 kibps per inhabitant. This innovative approach toward the quantification of the digital divide leads to numerous new challenges for the research agenda.     

Methodological Challenges of Digital Divide Measurements

The term “digital divide” has been used for almost a decade and typically relates to sociodemographic differences in the use of information and communication technology. However, the corresponding measurement is still relatively imprecise. Very often it is simply reduced to comparisons of Internet penetration rates. This article extends the measurements above the usual bivariate comparisons. Within this context, three essential approaches are presented and critically evaluated. First, loglinear modeling is used to address the interactions among the factors affecting the digital divide. Second, compound measures (i.e., the Digital Divide Index) that integrate a number of variables into a single indicator are discussed. Third, time-distance methodology is applied to analyze changes in the digital divide. The article argues that these approaches often yield entirely different conclusions compared to simple bivariate analysis. The examples are presented as a general warning against an oversimplified methodological approach to digital divide studies.     

Gaps and Bits: Conceptualizing Measurements for Digital Divide/s

Three arguments are raised in this article with regard to the indices used to measure the digital divide. First, I criticize policymakers who rely on simplistic measures of the digital divide, at the expense of a thoughtful analysis of (1) the purpose of the tool, (2) the level of observation, and (3) the method of approaching the data. Second, I argue that networks and associated technologies are not neutral artifacts but are political and social spaces in their structure as well as in their content levels. Accordingly, we need to factor in the context as an important actor in conceptualizing and measuring the digital divide. Third, two general types of indices are used for the measurement of the digital divide(s): focused monotopical indices and comprehensive indices. Monotopical indices are more widely available, while comprehensive ones are rare. I argue that policymakers need to promote comprehensive indices over monotopical indices. Finally, I present a conceptual definition of the digital divide and a framework for developing a comprehensive index to measure it.     

统筹城乡发展背景下重庆市城乡数字鸿沟及其影响因素的实证研究

本文构建了城乡数字鸿沟的测度指标体系,对重庆市2003-2014年城乡数字鸿沟及其影响因素进行了实证分析。研究发现重庆市的城乡数字鸿沟整体上呈现不断扩大趋势。经济因素、城乡居民受教育程度的差异以及地理、制度因素等是城乡数字鸿沟的重要影响因素。文章提出了相应的对策措施以弥合城乡数字鸿沟,促进城乡统筹发展。     

Who's Responsible for the Digital Divide? Public Perceptions and Policy Implications

Addressing the reasons for—and the solutions to—the “digital divide” has been on the public agenda since the emergence of the Internet. However, the term has meant quite different things, depending on the audience and the context, and these competing interpretations may in fact orient toward different policy outcomes. The goals of this article are twofold. First, the authors unpack the term “digital divide” and examine how it has been deployed and interpreted across a range of academic and policy discourses. Second, through a framing experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey, the authors demonstrate how presenting respondents with two different conceptual frames of the digital divide may lead to different perceptions of who is most accountable for addressing the issue. From this, they discuss the dynamic relationship between the construction and communication of policy discourse and the public understanding of the digital divide, as well as implications for effective communication about the digital divide and information and communication technology policy to the general public.     

我国数字鸿沟的社会效应分析

数字技术在给我们带来诸多便利的同时,也带来了新的不平等和新的社会分化,这就是数字鸿沟.数字鸿沟对社会产生的影响即是数字鸿沟的社会效应.教育鸿沟、性别鸿沟、城乡鸿沟是其3个主要方面.直接影响着经济社会的和谐发展.     

地缩小数字鸿沟构建和谐信息社会

构建一个和谐的信息社会，是公共图书馆在和谐社会构建中担负的不可推卸的责任。数字鸿沟已成为建设和谐信息社会的重大障碍。本文剖析了数字鸿沟产生的原因，我国数字鸿沟的状况及对和谐信息社会的危害，提出公共图书馆缩小数字鸿沟构建和谐信息社会的措施。     

Extracting Core ICT Indicators Using Entropy Method

In this article a methodology is presented to extract indicators that appropriately measure the information society and the digital divide between countries and the relevant statistics that the majority of countries can collect. With the help of content analysis, the entropy method, and consideration of the diffusion aspects of digitalization, 37 reputable information society and digital divide models are analyzed to indentify “core information and communication technology (ICT) indicators.” To overcome the limitation of the nonexistence of data, the information and the knowledge embedded in information society and digital divide models are employed as proxies for experts' opinions for extracting the core ICT indicators. Comparison of the prior indicators and the proposed ones reveals that the former ignore three important dimensions: e-learning, e-government, and networked world enablers.