The digital divide refers to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. It includes the imbalance both in physical access to technology and the resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen . Knowledge divide reflects the access of various social groupings to information and knowledge, typically gender, income, race, and by location.^[1] The term global digital divide refers to differences in access between countries. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide; Argoi 16:47, December 1, 2010 (UTC)

Ethics and Law in New Media
Wiki topic:	The Digital Divide.
Authors:	K.Caspar; Argo Ilves, Rasa Pachutko, Tatjana Pavlenko, Reimo Känd, Katrina Tomasicka
Deadlines:	28.11 - inside deadline, 13.12 - Wiki opening for reviews, 17.12 - Our feedback to other wikis.

Contents 1 Digital Divide: digital exclusion versus global participation. 2 Reducing Divide in EU: A Digital Agenda for Europe 3 Abilities and disabilities in the digital world 4 The negative side of digital divide's reduction 5 How to Control and Reduce Digital Divide

Digital Divide: digital exclusion versus global participation.Edit

As the use of Internet and various media permeade our daily lives, we tend to assume that the rest of the world follow the same pattern. Not so. A more correct description would be that we are divided along cultural and economical lines, reminiscent but not similar to the barriers of the idustrialized and the developing countries. We can speak about a digital divide where large parts of the world's population are excluded from taking part in the online society. The world Internet usage statistics, indicate the difference between the various regions and states. Access to the Internet is linked to social economy, geography and even culture. If we compere international air traffic with internet traffic, there are a stricking similarity between movement of atoms and bits. Air traffic follow distinct (and obviously) predetermined lines. The great majority of the routes are concentrated in the middle north, and very little south to south Atlanctic air traffic. We often imagine that we are connected in a global village, inter-connected across the world, whereas moreoften we tend to follow along traditional lines of historic presedence.

Cultural division and Global Attention Profile

With the flexilbity and availiability of modern sattelite-link systems, a reporter can be online with a story from anywhere on the planet, within seconds. But if we look at the distribution of stories new by major organisations and distrubuters (including Google) this is not the case. Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard reseacher, has looked at the GAP (Global Attention Profile) of different news organisations. His work shows that all countries has special, historically formed attention linked to other countries, like the US and Iran and UK and the former colonies.

Analyzing the news.google.com (on June 27, 2003): show the GAP interest is markedly higher in areas like Canada, western Europe, Iran-Iraq, Australia and New Zealand. Even though Canada, New Zealand and Australia has relatively small population density, the news attention they get is disproportionately large. Generally speaking, there is an asymmetrical tendency to report news from areas that countries have had former relation to (like former colonies) or if there is a major crisis or political unrest. And the same applies to other countries and regions: like air-traffic, media GAP seem to follow predetermined routes.

Comparative studies suggest that the under-reporting from the non-western sphere of interest, is even weaker than just a few decades ago when the reports from remote (as percieved by the western world) regions were more exstensive and common, in spite of the technical challenges this represented. And if there are reports from such areas, they tend to be negative; such media bias is nothing new, of course, and is not linked or restricted to any paticular country or culture. The accessibilty of internet news does not appear to change this pattern.

Iran vs. Michael

Our interest as consumers reflects how media culture also follow relatively predefined lines. To the left is a graph of the US news media comparing the news interest in the election in Iran (2009) and the demise of popstar Michael Jackson. A more democratic development in Iran could have far reaching political consequenses for the middle east region, if not the whole world. Yet internet attention was on the 'King of Pop'. The graph shows hits in the top 25 search engines two weeks the summer of 2009. Internet users' attention, it appears, are not dictated by political solidary within the "Global Village" but rather by manifestations of poplular culture and it's products. Only if there is a natural disaster, brutal war atrocities or some scandal linked to celebreties, our attention is divided. It is fair to say that those outside our GAP area excist in a different, weaker way.

Social media and language barriers

As the rapid spread of social media continues, it is normal to assume that this also includes the non-anglophone world. But tools like Facebook, MySpace, Ning and others do not easily connect arcoss barriers of culture and language. There are wast groups of people who are not connected to such social media: in China, there are estimated some 425 million internet users who do not speak english at all. They are excluded from what we consider "the global village" by cutural barriers. According to the Chinese CNNIC (who follows the development closely) the political leadership is said to consider internet development closely linked to economic development, and while the annual growt of the public use of computers have increased by ca 30% annualy the last 10 years, there is still a major digital divide.
In the rural China, there are many areas with very limited access to computers. The large majority of interet users are in the big cities. This means that a large group of chinese are excluded, as in other countries, because of language or network barriers. (Censorship is of course another matter, altogether).

Even so, there are many who try to counteract the tendency of separation. Language is a major obstacle, and even with free translations online, the result are often less than perfect. In China, a large group of volunteers knows as the Yyets, are every day translating many anglophone newspapers, TV-shows and other items of interest, for a widespread chinese audience. The volunteers share the work, each translating a smal part. This phenomena, commonly known as Crowdsourcing, creates new possibilities in crossing multicultural and political divisions.

Crowsourcing democratic participation.

In the Third world, we now see emerging signs of how internet and computer technologies are not just emulating the west, but creating new means and ways of utilising the new media to serve their own needs. While many of the costly solutions are not always available, they have to create alternatives. In Kenya and the eastern Africa, a group of volunteers have taken on a challenging task: the project is called Ushahidi . This project create open source software for 'information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping'. They already have had a strong impact, and the Ushahidi applications have been used during the Haiti earthquake, in Kenya during the violent election campaigns, and many other places. One of their new programs, called Swift River, allows users to report accidents or incidents via their mobile phones. They already have had much attention from traditional software developers and are working on a number of new projects, all of which has in common: user participation, democratic development, and inclusion of users in low-tech contexts.

Bridging the Gap

Even if non-english speaking peoples are traditionally ignored or excluded from the frontpage of media interest, they can find ways to bridge the gap. Internet, even in poorer countries, is expanding rapidly and the number of non-english speakers are catching on. Many are trying to encourage this development. As new technologies grow and social media develop we need to find ways to connect and include others. CNN even have a dedicated project to this effect, called Global Connections. Here, they find ways to connect people in different cities in the world, letting new stories be told. Global Voices, an initiative of Ethan Zuckerman and others, is another attempt to counteract the tradition of media bias: Here, users can participate and upload stories and videos from local news around the world. Global Voices is particulary interesting, as they use the advance of Internet technology to allow new voices to be heard. Global Voices, among other, represent a simple, inexpensive and accesible way to reach out, across the digital divide.

References: .https://graphics.stanford.edu/wikis/cs448b-10-fall/Mapping_and_Cartography

http://gapdev.law.harvard.edu/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10438082

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/index.htm

http://globalvoicesonline.org/

Bridging the Global Digital Divide, James, Jeffery. Edward Elgar Publishing (June 2003)

Reducing Divide in EU: A Digital Agenda for EuropeEdit

By Katrina Tomasicka

The Global Digital Divide refers to the differences in terms of accessing information in different countries. As we already can imagine the differences are enormous and people now are searching ways how to effectively reduce them. Even in the European Union the gap is considerable.

The research carried out by McCaffey shows that the digital divide in the EU corresponds to the general world pattern of digital divide and the main divides are gender, language and location (accessibility). The price of using internet varies over countries very much.

The European Union has also recognized digital divide to be a problem between member states and the reduction of digital divide is also a part of Europe 2020 EU growth strategy.

European Commission has urged to close the digital divide in Europe by ensuring that all citizens in the region have affordable broadband access. EC sees individual initiatives not to a sufficient factor for open networks to develop and is willing to contribute in controlling and reducing the digital divide in Europe.

The part of Europe 2010 that focuses on reducing the digital divide in Europe is the Europe’s Digital Agenda. The document has been approved on 31 May 2010 and consists of seven sections that state what needs to be done in upcoming 2-3 years for maximizing the potential of ICT to address Europe's key challenges. As it is stated in the introduction of the document, “the overall aim of the Digital Agenda is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast internet and interoperable applications.”

The main pillars of the Agenda are:

• Digital Single Market – there are still too many diversifications in the digital market, so the cyberspace in Europe needs to be simplified and united in order to be transparent and work efficiently
• Interoperability and Standards – it needs to be ensured that the IT devices, data storages and applications are interoperable and compatible with each other

• Trust and Security – the security of internet transactions needs to be maximized with strict common policy; online fraud, malicious software and cyber attacks need to reduced to a minimum level so every internet user could feel safe when making a transaction or just browsing the web

• Very Fast Internet - the speed of the internet connection needs to grow in line with the developing technology that needs high speed connection

• Research and innovation – a significant amount of funding needs to be invested into research and innovation in order to maintain a sustainable growth in the IT sphere in the EU

• Enhancing e-skills – the aim of this section is to increase the fraction of the population that use internet in general to makes their lives easier. It focuses mostly on elderly people and people who don’t use internet in their daily routine, for example, if they don’t need internet at the workplace

• ICT for Social Challenges – this pillar focuses on various ways how internet and digitalization can improve persons’ lives. A good examples would be reducing the energy consumption and making a unite digital health records system.

Every section of the Digital Agenda of Europe has a measurable and realizable sub aims that are easy to monitor and implement. This step-to-step system is a great start for European Commission to reduce the digital divide in Europe and maintain a sustainable growth in this sphere.

Digital agenda: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52010DC0245(01):EN:NOT

About digital agenda: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm

The research carried out by McCaffey: http://www.oscail.ie/academic/picture/CMcCaffery.pdf

Abilities and disabilities in the digital worldEdit

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.

People with disabilities benefit from the opportunities technology offers everyone else, such as word processing, Internet exploration, and database access. In addition, however, some individuals use technology to compensate for the inability to perform a specific function due to a disability. For example, a person who cannot speak with his or her own voice can use a computer-based https://elearning.ufp.pt/portal to "speak" for him or her.

Different disabilities tend to generate different ways of digital divide. As some people are able to use technology, for their advantage, then some have to stay away from digital world, as they are not able to use any kind of equipments. By different physical disabilities there are invented a lot of equipments which help to reduce gap between different users - as long technology is reachable for them. Good example is a boy who has not enough strength to hold mouse, but manages well with iPad.

In addition to physical disabilities, there is also people, who have mental or complex disabilities. In this case, the cap between users and these who are not using digital technology and internet as part of it, is enormous. People with disabilities, who can access technology or internet, are able to take a part of society and other hand by these, who can't theres large digital cap. In conclusion disabilities are important part in discussion about digital divide.

Ref:

• http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/
• http://www.ncset.org/publications/viewdesc.asp?id=718

Argoi 20:53, December 1, 2010 (UTC)

The negative side of digital divide's reductionEdit

made by Rasa Pachutko

It seems obvious that the digital divide is one of the factors that when rises improves the quality of our lives. A lot of means are being used to reduce the number of disadvantaged families but do they always have good effects? I would analyze this rare question using the Duke University’s scientists’ researches called Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement from 2008 and 2010.

According to the report we may see what means have been undertaken already:

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative, for example, spent $50 million in 2003 to provide Apple ibook laptops to each 6th grade student. The Texas Technology Immersion Project has provided laptops to students in 22 pilot middle schools since 2004. The Recovery School District in New Orleans recently issued laptops to all high school students, at the cost of $1.67 million for a single-year lease. In Australia, prime minister Kevin Rudd campaigned in 2007 on a pledge to issue laptops to all students in grades 9-12.

And what should be done in order to reduce the digital divide:

There are roughly 4.5 million students in each American public secondary school cohort. Given the typical laptop lifespan of 3 years, each would require two laptops for the six to seven years of secondary school. If purchased for $1,000 each, the annual cost would be $9 billion. For comparison purposes, the entire Federal budget for the Title I program in fiscal 2007 was just under $13 billion.

And the question arises is it worth spending that money?..

From one point of view the use of computers helps us getting along with the new technologies and accustoms us to every day changing world. Obviously, it’s a huge help while learning – we may find anything we want. Although students use laptops as well at home as in the university, there are more and more negative opinions. We may read in Daniel de Vise’s article Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls:

A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming — all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student’s attention. [...] The laptop computer, introduced in 1981, has become nearly obligatory on campus; some colleges require them. They are as essential to today’s student as a working stereo system was to their parents.

Nevertheless there is a huge negative impact especially on children and teenagers. In the report we read:

The absence of positive effects in these more rigorous studies may reflect any of several hypothesized mechanisms associating home computer use with worsened student outcomes, including the displacement of social activities and attendant loneliness and depression, exposure to inappropriate violent, sexual, or commercial content, and physical problems including increased obesity and injuries to the eyes, back, and wrist (Bielefeldt, 2005).

As these outcomes are quite obvious and every person faces them voluntarily using the computers and the internet, there are other results that might be surprising.

Our results show that these concerns are valid. Simple OLS estimates suggest that students who have access to home computers and use them for homework a few times each month score significantly higher on standardized math and reading tests than those with no computer access. Student fixed-effect results, by contrast, show modest but statistically significant negative impacts of home computer access, and little impact of use conditional on access. In these models, we can trace the impact of home computer introduction for periods of up to three years; there is no indication that the negative effect of access diminishes over this time period.

And,

While subsidies for home computer or internet access could still be advocated on the grounds that they improve these vocational skills, our results suggest that lower math and reading test scores, and wider test score gaps, would be an additional consequence. From the perspective of traditional academic skills, the digital divide proves to be of little practical concern.(…) For school administrators interested in maximizing achievement test scores, or reducing racial and socioeconomic disparities in test scores, all evidence suggests that a program of broadening home computer access would be counterproductive. Of course, administrators may have other goals aside from improving math and reading test scores.

Nowadays the paradigm of teaching is changing radically. It’s no longer important the knowledge but the skills. We do not need to have a lot of information but know how to filter it. The schools are elaborating their students for professions that don’t even exist. But, it is not clear, however, whether computer literacy actually leads to better employment outcomes (Krueger, 1993; DiNardo and Pischke 1997), and also not clear whether access to home computers in the early secondary school years is critical to later computer literacy. Further research may be very valuable in addressing these concerns.

To sum up I want to quote Bill’s opinion posted in his blog (older man’s introduction to the internet):

Google': When I was young and I wanted to know something, I was beaten for being too inquisitive. That’s the problem with the young people today, they have a google answer for everything. If they had to walk to their local library every time they had something stupid to ask they would ask a lot less stupid questions.

Literature:

Bielefeldt, T. (2005). Computers and student learning: Interpreting the multivariate analysis of PISA 2000. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 37(4), 339-347.

DiNardo, J.E., J.-S. Pischke (1997) “The Returns to Computer Use Revisited: Have Pencils Changed the Wage Structure Too?” Quarterly Journal of Economics v.112 pp.291-303.

Krueger, A.B. (1993) “How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure: Evidence from Microdata, 1984-1989.” Quarterly Journal of Economics v.108 pp.33-60.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/events/colloquia/Vigdor_ScalingtheDigitalDivide.pdf

http://www.nber.org/papers/w16078.pdf?new_window=1

http://www.27bslash6.com/bill.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030804915.html

How to Control and Reduce Digital DivideEdit

Created by - Reimo

To ponder on the digital divide question, first of all, we should take a look at the numbers that state the accessibility and usage of ICT. I have taken an example from the European Union, and mainly based on new members states of the European Union that were accepted in 2004. First studies that were made in the field in 2003 state numbers that for us, living in Estonia, might seem a bit overstated. Still, a survey conducted in June 2003 in new member states' households shows quite startling results. On average, eleven per cent said they had no idea what the internet actually was and 23 per cent confessed they did not know how to use a computer. These numbers were average to a time about seven years ago.

To go deeper into the divide, figures for the worst performer at that time (Bulgaria) show how deep the digital divide can get. Twenty three per cent of respondents there did not to know what the Internet was and almost half could not use a computer. To reduce that gap, the e-Europe+ action plan was created which Commission emphasized on the basic skills required to drive the demand for information society services in new Member States.

Bare in mind, these numbers were according to the households. The same report had more promising results when looking at businesses. For Businesses, the results were far more encouraging. According to a survey conducted in November 2003 by e-business watch, the gap between the EU 15 and the new Member States in terms of Internet connections or even broadband access is much smaller than expected. Estonian businesses for instance, had the same rate of connection to very high-speed networks (2Mbps - two megabits per second) as France, Germany and the UK. The only significant differences noted in the report were for more sophisticated e-business applications such as online procurement and supply chain integration that required back-office re-organization.

Now, these steps taken by the European community might just be one of the main factors why the numbers have grown a lot since 2004. Of course we have to keep in mind the steps taken by our own states also. According to a later study (2010) by Statistics Estonia the numbers of internet users between the age 16-74 has gone up from 49% to 74%.

To take a look at the numbers concerning the digital divide that we see all over the world, it raises the question, who should be standing up and working towards a solution as such? As noted before, the European Union has taken the necessary steps to provide support, in order to encourage the new member states, but outside of that?

The G8 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US) are home to almost 50% of the world’s total Internet users even though they had just 15% of the world’s population (WSIS, 2005, Did you know that…? Section). For example, Denmark has more than twice the international Internet bandwidth that the whole of Latin American and the Caribbean combined (WSIS, 2005). Through these numbers and of course the growth seen in the European union, there should be a rapid progress in the developing countries also, should it not?

The first step, which includes providing access, meets significant challenges from income restrictions. For example, in Mexico, providing ICT access to the poorest 20% of the society would require a reduction of access prices from an estimated US$ 244 per year (in 2007) to an estimated US$ 35 per year (US$ 3 per month). In Brazil, the poorest 20% of the population has only US$ 9 per year to spend on ICT(US$ 0.75 per month). The economic reality of these income segments in developing countries shows the challenges faced by programs, such as One Laptop Per Child.

On the 15^th of May 2001,the OECD Forum took place. Panelists agreed that both government initiatives and private sector participation would be needed to provide universal Internet access and the improved education necessary to function well in the knowledge economy. In confronting the social and professional challenges of information and communications technology (ICT), Michel Bon (France Telecom chief executive) said, it has also become necessary to educate the politicians who initiate programs on a government level. Denis Gilhooly, Director of ICT for Development at the UN Development Programme, called for a more international and global effort to combat “not the digital divide, but the same social and economic divide that has always existed between the developed and non-developed world.” Faster liberalisation would help bring higher investment in ICT infrastructure in the third world, but efforts in the non-developed world would have to be designed to allow for market failures.

This is all great, but back to the numbers again. In OECD countries excluding the United States the share of Internet users quadrupled from 7% to 28% between 1998 and 2000. The numbers also went from 1.7 million to 9.8 million users in Brazil, from 3.8 million to 16.9 million in China and from 2,500 to 25,000 in Uganda. Oh yes, Uganda has the population of 25 632 800, according to the information in 2003.

So I do see the digital divide as a serious and growing issue still in 2010, but the steps taken seem a bit too much on the promises side. And yes, I do agree with the OECD Forum speakers Michel Bon and Denis Gilhooly that we need to support and educate the politicians at the government level and deal with the economics first. But to look at the successful development of European countries in the field, it might be the right step to provide the ICT support to developing countries in order to set off necessary developments in the economical field.

Literature:

1. http://www.euractiv.com/en/enlargement/information-society-new-member-states-catching-long-way/article-111641

2. http://pub.stat.ee/pxweb.2001/Dialog/varval.asp?ma=IT32&ti=16%2D74%2DAASTASED+ARVUTI+JA+INTERNETI+KASUTAJAD+ISIKUTE+R%DCHMA+J%C4RGI&path=../Database/Majandus/05Infotehnoloogia/04Infotehnoloogia_leibkonnas/&lang=2

3. http://www.riso.ee/et/files/eSeire_2008_I_internetikasutajate%20profiil.pdf

4. http://www.riso.ee/et/

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_digital_divide

6. http://laptop.org/en/

7. http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ethics_and_Law_in_New_Media/The_Digital_Divide