Life Online: Social inequality and internet use

1. Life Online:Social inequality and internet use Arthur Vankan (0613722)

2. Social implications of the Internet (DiMaggio et al. 2001)

3. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Inequality • Community and social capital • Political participation • Organizations and other economic institutions • Cultural participation and cultural diversity

4. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Digital divide refers to “inequalities in acces to the Internet, extent of use, knowledge of search strategies, quality of technical connections and social support, ability to evaluate the quality of information, and diversity of uses”

5. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Optimists: internet would reduce inequality due to open resource sharing • Sceptics: greatest benefits will accrue to high-SES persons

6. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Digital divide in the US • Favoring college educated, the wealthy, whites, people under the age of 55 and, especially in earlier years, men and urban dwellers (Katz & Aspden 1997) • Less affluent and less well-educated users are more likely to become nonusers • Access reflect resource control, intensity reflects demand

7. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Age • Gender • Income • Education • Ethnicity • Geographical location • Computer skills

8. Social implications of the internet(DiMaggio et al. 2001) • Global digital divide • Internet users from 16 million in 1995 to almost 360 million by mid-2000 • 97% of host computers located in developed countries (1998) • English dominant and lack of local content • Inequality in content: 80% of visits to 0.5% of all websites and bias due to search engines

9. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004)

10. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004)

11. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • Eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, and Mexico • They account for 68% of internet users • Diverse patterns of Internet access and use • Developing countries, rapidly growing

12. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • Problems with comparing data: • The definition of online population often differs from country to country • Lack of a standard definition of who is an Internet user • Different units of analysis (persons versus households)

13. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • Digital divide is national and international • Occurs at the intersection of international and intranational socioeconomic, technological and linguistic differences • The diffusion of Internet use in developed countries may be slowing and even stalling

14. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • The digital divide between first-movers and latecomers among developed countries is narrowing • The nature of the digital divide varies between countries • The digital divide remains substantial between developed and developing countries

15. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • The digital divide can widen even as the number and percentage of Internet users increases • The digital divide is wide and deep in developing countries • The digital divide has profound impacts on the continuation of social inequality • There are multiple digital divides, not just a single digital divide

16. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • Socioeconomic status: Internet users are more likely to be better off and better educated than non-users in all eight countries surveyed • Gender: Men are more likely than women to access and use the Internet • Life stage: In both developed and developing countries, the Internet penetration rate among younger people is substantially higher than that among older people

17. Charting digital divides (Wellman 2004) • Geographic location: Geographic location affects access to and use of the Internet • Note that results look like those from DiMaggio et al. (2001)

18. Digital distinction: Status-specific types of internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009)

19. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009) • Not only about users vs. nonusers, also ways of usage • Skill as an underlying factor, but hardly ever measured • Resource and routine aspects • Interest versus status

20. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009) • Internet as increasing resource in economy  investigate people’s engagement and who is benefiting • No pure luxury anymore • Capital-enhancing consequences of Internet usage

21. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009) • Variables background: social status, age, gender, topic interest • SES: educational degree, income, occupational prestige, and a subjective rating by the interviewer • Variables of use: Technical equipment: (1) quality of their computer equipment; (2) the age of their computer; (3) connectivity speed; (4) and Internet pricing.

22. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009) • Digital experience: (1) hardwarerelated technical proficiency; (2) self-reported Internet-related knowledge; (3) time spent online; (4) level of computer interest perceived among the people in one’s social surroundings

23. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009)

24. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009)

25. Digital distinction: Status-specific Types of Internet usage (Zilien and Hargittai 2009)

26. The deepening divide (Van Dijk 2005)

27. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Chapter 2: A framework for understanding the digital divide • Relational view: include the bonds, relationships, interactions, and transactions between people

28. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Core argument: • Categorical inequalities in society produce an unequal distribution of resources • An unequal distribution of resources causes unequal access to digital technologies • Unequal access to digital technologies also depends on the characteristics of these technologies • Unequal access to digital technologies brings about unequal participation in society • Unequal participation in society reinforces categorical inequalities and unequal distributions of resources

29. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005))

30. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Personal categories • Age or generation (young-old) • Sex or gender (male-female) • Race or ethnicity (e.g. white-black) • Intelligence; cognitive, emotional, social (high-low) • Personality (e.g. extravert-introvert)

31. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Positional categories • Labor (e.g. employer-worker) • Household (e.g. Parent-child) • Nation (e.g. developing-developed, city-rural area) • Education (e.g. high-low, in school-finished)

32. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Three mechanisms of distributing resources • Social exclusion • Exploitation • Control

33. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Different resources • Temporal resources (time to spend on different activities in life) • Material resources (properties, e.g. income) • Mental resources (knowledge, social and technical skills) • Social resources (social positions and relationships) • Cultural resources (cultural assets, status and all kinds of credentials)

34. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Kinds of access • Motivational access • Material or physical access • Skills access • Usage access

35. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Participation in society • Labor market • Education • Politics • Culture • Social relationships • Spatial arrangements • Citizenship • Social security • Health provisions

36. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005))

37. The deepening divide (Van Dijk (2005)) • Chapter 5: Skills access • Operational skills: operating computers and the Internet • Information skills: • Formal: formal characteristics (e.g. hyperlink) • Substantial: ability to find, select, process and evaluate information • Strategic skills

38. Communicative entitlements and democracy (Couldry 2007)

39. Communicative entitlements and democracy (Couldry 2007) • Communicative entitlement: citizens’ rightful claim in a democracy to ‘be listened to and be treated seriously’ • In participatory democratic theory this would flow from mutuality: our requirement to recognize each other as agents capable of debating, and reaching shared decisions about, common issues (Benhabib, 1995)

40. Communicative entitlements and democracy (Couldry 2007) • Fear that individualization leads to an irreversible degeneration of the public sphere • Information abundance, attention scarcity & lack of traditional civic engagement

41. Communicative entitlements and democracy (Couldry 2007) • First, access to information flow to form own opinions • Second, access to opportunities to take part in collective discussions • 1 + 2 The effective opportunity to participate online. “The opportunities for citizens to be informed and to be heard” • Caveat: government’s side needs to be rethought to do something with these communicative resources

42. Communicative entitlements and democracy (Couldry 2007) • Making communicative entitlement broader: Sen’s capability approach • Distributive rights: not only looking at goods, but at capabilities to achieve functionings that have (variable) value • Possibility, not possession! • Still unclear how media interacts with engagement

43. Discussion

44. Questions • What other aspects of social economic status could underly the digital divide(s)? • Should the government make specific policies regarding the digital divide? If so, what would they look like? Or is inequality maybe unevitable? • Do you think the digital divide in the NL, or certain aspects of this divide, will increase or decrease, and why?

45. Questions • At what points is being an ‘Internet-elite’ crucially advantageous? • Do you think participation in society also increases motivational access (something Van Dijk does not mention), which would even more strongly reinforce the-rich-get richer-effect? • What problems do you expect to arise in the future due to the digital divide?