The Crucial Factors Of Impacting Digital Divide

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Student name: BINGBING ZHANG

Student number: 12033610

Tutor’s name: Malcolm Scott

Abstract

The appearance of digital divide has attracted mass of research in past decades with the development of ICT. The existing researches pay mass attention on the topics of how to eliminate ‘divide’. However, in order to resolve this problem, it is necessary to first understand the underlying factors that result in the digital divide and the relationship among those factors. The first section is the investigation on the status of digital divide based on statistic and reality. In the second section, this paper focuses on the comprehensive impact of multiple factors and their interaction. First, the exploration and analysis starts from the factor of economy which is common and critical to not only digital development but also many other factors. The second crucial factor is technology, which is the basic of ICT and digital application. Education is the third factor discussed in this paper. On one hand, education supports the spread of technology and knowledge. On the other hand, it need economy as foundation. At last, this paper analyzes the effect of culture which is one easily overlooked factor due to its impact is not so direct as economy. In the third section, the analysis is based on the case of digital development in EU in the perspective of combined factors. At last, this paper gives the conclusion according to previous analysis, discussion and findings. It will provide foundation for further research such as how to systematically resolve digital gap.

Key words: digital divide, economical level, IT, education, cultural difference.

Content

Introduction

The distribution of digital related resource such as the infrastructure of Internet is not uniform around the world. For instance, most of Internet fibers are deployed in North American, European and part of Asian countries. In such information time, digital resource is player a key role in economic and social growth. In this case, international organizations such as the United Nation are paying attention on alleviating global digital divide.　In addition, many countries also regard it as a major task in national development. Alleviation of the global digital divide has been a major task. Those organizations or countries have endeavored to explore what factors impact the digital divide. For example, the UN studies the global digital divide through consecutively monitoring the percentage of Internet accessible people in different countries and regions, namely the digital gap between countries (Pick and Azari, 2007). The research of cross-countries digital divide primarily center on social and economic inequalities among developed and developing countries (Ruth, 2012, Cruz-Jesus et al., 2012). Just as indicated by Vehovar(2006), in order to look insight the digital divide, it is necessary to identify the crucial factors that result in current state. Based on researches, the most distinct causes of digital divide arise from none or inadequate using of computer and Internet. It means that reducing the divide isn’t impossible. Although the underlying causes of digital divide are intricacy and complex, via analysis based on abundant materials and phenomenon, it includes difference of income (Mahendra, 2001), education level (Cotton and Jelenewicz, 2006), gender factor (Cooper, 2006), etc. The analysis on primary factors is meaningful. On one hand, it direct influences how to diminish the digital divide. For instance, education level is one key factors lead to digital divide in many countries (Meinrath et al., 2011). Therefore, one of important approach resolving this gap is providing adequate training and instructs，helping unskilled and illiterate populations benefit from the digital and communicational techniques. This paper will analyze the crucial factors that impact global digital gap in multiple angles including economy, politic, population and culture, etc. Especially, the research work will integrate quality quantitative and qualitative methods in order to explore the underlying causes that result to digital divide, which also provides foundation for the solution of this problem.

Status of digital divide

The digital divide is most commonly defined as the gap between those individuals and communities that have, and do not have, access to the information technologies that are transforming our lives (Stiakakis et al., 2010). More and more countries have realized the problem of digital divide that is influencing more and more people. In order to have a complete and comprehensive understanding toward digital divide, it is necessary to objectively evaluate its status based on public materials and research the process of its forming, which is meaning for observing what leads to hibernal status. In this section, the status of digital divide is evaluated based on quantitative statistic and qualitative phenomenon.

The history and status of ‘digital divide’

According to most accounts such as in reference xx, the problems of digital inequality can be traced back to the late 1960s, which is early than most people’s imagination. In fact, this problem’s appearance followed the term ‘digital time’ with the development of computer techniques. In the beginning of ‘digital time’, due to the limited application of computer and communication techniques, digital divide is not so apparent as today. In the early-to-mid 1990s, the term digital divide was widely used with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore using this phrase in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1996. After that, this problem raised global attentions. More important, many people realized that the divide would not disappear of its own accord because history illustrated that even as new technologies create growth and new opportunity, they can also heighten economic inequalities and sharpen social divisions. Since then, many countries and IT companies investigated on narrowing the digital divide, however very few of these works survived the broken of dot-com foam in the end of 20 century. Around that time, the efforts of closing divide shifted from developed countries over to the developing world, where the debate over government policies surrounding information and communication technologies had only just started. The process of digital divide’s appearance and evolution means that this issue is a dynamic topic with the development of digital technologies in different period. For example, before the popularity of Internet, the gap was reflected in the ability of using personal computer and the rate of possessing PC. But today, people concern more on the access of Internet. This implies that the there are different factors resulting in digital divide in different periods. The current status is the result of comprehensive function of those factors.

Evaluation of digital divide

Between countries

With the development of information and communication technology such as computer and internet, the world is go ahead rapidly, however, the development does not balance among individuals or groups. Table 1 shows the reality that there exist digital divide in our digital world (Wang and Yu, 2011).

Table 1 Computers Owned by Every 10 Thousand People

World

High-income countries

Middle- and low-income countries

Finland

USA

China

63.1

375

2.41

996

976

0.16

Crucial factors

Economy

The Digital Divide can be simply defined as the gap between the rich people who benefit from the access to technology and the poor who do not benefit as much from access to technology(Schleife, 2010). This definition implies that economical factor has crucial impact toward the digital divide. In another perspective, the primary motivation of technology companies is making profit, not act of charity or undertaking the responsibility belonging to government (Schleife, 2010). A simple and direct approach of evaluating the impact of economical factor is comparing the gap between rich and poor countries and people. Although the issues of digital divide are the result of many factors’ combined action, it can be said that it is the economics that have been the crucial creator of the digital divide. A reasonable logic is that the people with the least money are usually those who possess the least digital equipment and technological knowledge as well. A stable economical circumstance is the essential condition that the developing countries can catch up to wealthier countries. Figure 2 reflects the economical level of Africa in the perspective of GDP. Clearly, the gap inner Africa and the gap between Africa and world average level are huge. The practical research also shows that it is almost impossible that a country can do to bridge the gap without a stable economy (Sekabembe, 2011).

Figure 2 GDP of Africa in 2013.

Graph showing most and least connected nations

Figure 3 percentage of connected Internet between countries.

According to the statistic shown in figure 3 from ITU (International Telecommunication Union), there is a widening gap between those rich countries such as Sweden with access to technology and those poorest African countries without. Meanwhile, the gap between nations on the same continent is also getting wider. The reality of Africa can reflect the impact of economical factor on digital gap. According to statistic, only 4 percent of Africans have access to Internet, which is far below the global average level. The Internet connection speeds are the slowest in African countries, but they pay the most in the world. Congo and Sudan, the two largest countries of Africa, have no Internet connection at all. Even in Uganda, a relatively rich nation, only one of 200 people use e-mail. Besides the shortage of fundamental digital construction, those limited African uses must face irregular electricity, obsolete computer systems, and lack of local digital content. The underlying causes resulting this gap can be explained in two aspects based on economical factor. First, the economy level of African economic is really lower than other continents. According to IMF(International money fund)，the average GDP of African accounts for only over 2% share of world, which is matched with its digital and information level. This directly results in the deprivation of Internet and communication construction and poor Internet state as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4 Internet states in Africa in 2012

In summary, in the angle of economy, although there are similarities, the causes that result in digital divides are different based on international and domestic backgrounds. Generally speaking, no matter international or domestic factor, money is one inevitable element. The difference is the money usually is from government on the domestic level while internationally these developing countries must somehow help themselves.

Technologies

If economical level determines whether individual and organization have enough investigation on ICTs, the technology is able to impact the cost and ability of ICTs. Compared with helping developing countries increase access to PCs and the Internet, finding out how to use technologies to benefit the people in their current predicament is one better choice. Recently, with the trend that mobile phone related technologies has the greatest impact on digital development, some exporters (Kyriakidou et al., 2011, Wei, 2011) proposed that the promotion of mobile phones rather than computers is a trend for revolving digital divide. Just as reported in an article from Economist, extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by 0.6 percentage points. People do not need to be able to read or write to use mobile phones and so the advantages are much more obvious. Another important thing to note is that in certain parts of the world, technology brings more problems than solutions. For example, in a rural community in the Middle East, a kid might stop going to school because the local cyber cafe has video-games in their computers. In this case, the access of technology is not benefiting this kid, or the community he lives on (Stoica and Ilas, 2011). This fact created a bigger gap in technology in the late 90's (Caudill, 2010).

As discussed above, technologies have critical impact for ICTs. However, technology is one relatively positive factor that bridges digital divide (Da Rosa et al., 2012). PC, notebook and other expensive equipments accessing Internet are difficult to obtain without sufficient fund support. But technologies enable to access via more wide equipment which are cheaper and simpler to use. For instance, with the development of WiFi and 3G technologies, the mobile phone and its increasing features are helping to bridge the digital divide. Mobile equipment including phone, Tablet PC, notebooks and other mini devices are becoming integral component in narrowing the digital divide. Recent years, the use of mobile broadband has been an explosion due to the driving of communication technologies. This trend can be reflected from the increase of smart phone market, the sale of which has for the first time exceeded feature phones. The smart phone technology is changing the phase that computer is the only port to Internet. First, mobile phones are relatively cheaper compared with traditional PC and laptop computers. This means it is affordable for those who can not afford PC. Second, mobile phone, due to the high-speed development of technologies, is small and portable, have good battery life, provide instant voice communications. Third, it has the ability to provide access to the internet. Forth, hundreds of millions of some of the poorest members of society either own one or have access to one. No other two-way communications technology comes close (radio, which is a hugely relevant and influential channel, is obviously only one-way).

With the popularity of Internet, its potential for spreading and communication is realized by more and more people. Technologies continue enhancing the functions of Internet such as video conference and instant message which are unimaginable decades ago. In addition, technologies also massively impact our society and culture. The internet has made communication more versatile, more powerful and more efficient than ever before. For instance, social networking has literally changed the way we communicate, via which the communication is no longer limited in just friends and families. Now people have opportunity to share their emotions, feelings, photos with the world.

Education

Compared with economy and technology, a specific characteristic of education is its reaction force to digital divide. In other words, digital divide also has essential impact toward education. According to the statistics (Wang, 2011), in past ten years, school Internet connectivity has grown from 35% to 100% in China. In American, there have been many famous universities such as Harvard providing various online classes from mathematics to history. This trend has promoted more and more countries and educational organizations to public educational resource on Internet (Sekabembe and Ssempebwa, 2011). Education is probably the most important issue that affects person’s ability to benefit from digital technology. Unless people can read and understand what they find on the Internet, all the computers and networks in the world won't be of much use. For example, it is almost impossible for an illiteracy discerning the difference between ‘Amazon.com’ and ‘Amacon.us’. According to general criteria (ChanLin et al., 2012), the individual able to access to Internet needs the ability includes:

                  1) How to apply the technology

                  2) How to search and retrieve relevant information via the Web

                  3) Process the information in order to answer their information problem

It means individuals should not only have the accessibility to the Internet, but the knowledge to utilize the Internet. For instance, literacy problem because of absence of education in Bangladesh results in the crisis of skilled computer user (ChanLin et al., 2012). They don’t have essential knowledge to employ the information in the Internet which is designed based on advanced technologies.  Moreover, the less educated community usually is not very computer friendly. In addition, lack of technical support to install the systems and repair the equipment can be problematic and troublesome. Especially with the deficiency of technical expertise, school teachers are often without guidance and little experience with technology as to how to utilize the existing equipment and integrate into the curriculum (Wattal et al., 2011). Therefore, students are not able to receive sufficient technological skills.

Narrowing the digital divide is achievable if there are enough creativity and innovation incorporating solutions (Han et al., 2007). Online education has trickled down for university students. If it can be widespread in primary and secondary school in preferential especially in those developing and under developing countries, both education and the gap in digital divide will be significantly meliorated (Lalmas et al., 2007b). With the development of technologies of digital equipment, the tools that meet students’ demand will become affordable for most people. For example, the Android platform tablet Aakash costs around $50 in Indian, which is less than the price of many textbooks.

In the perspective of education, as indicated by Azam (2008) giving students in under-funded school districts greater access to digital technology is possible. At least, it is not even necessarily difficult compared with resolving other issues such as environment protection. Of course, its implementation still need a visible push toward innovative methods for technology integration and an understanding that the digital divide isn’t just an inconvenience that we have to accept. It’s a problem for which a solution exists if we’re willing to undertake the effort required to close the gap in the digital divide. Another reason that education is crucial is its relationship with literacy. Although literacy is arguably on relating with new technologies and ability, the view that it is essential to individual career development, participation in politics and further learning is widely accepted by governments and people. In other words, education’s impact is not as direct as economical.

Internet access is highly correlated with educational achievement and education is crucial to ensure students’ right to access to ICTs in school day. Education for students not only means teaching students the skills of accessing Internet but also the ability of assessing the validity of information and online resources. Students should be told that they are not only consumers on Internet but also creators. Limited times of staying in computer labs is not sufficient to bridge the digital gap. It’s time for schools to close the technology gap once and for all by implementing a 1:1 program for all students.

Culture

Economy, technology and education can be seen as outer factors that impact digital state but culture is the inner characteristic which strictly relate with countries, race, religion and life style, etc. In this paper, the notion of culture is a specific that means Information cultures. This culture refers the relationship people who have access to information and those who don not in society. It reflects the distribution of power on flow of digital and information resources. In the perspective of Information Cultures, the distribution and flow of information relate with society structure. For instance, a society with strong hierarchical structure, there will be less control on public information. In contrast, in more liberal societies a broader basis for direct access to public information has been established. It implies, in further, more hierarchically structured societies are less likely to concern digital development than liberal societies with a flatter hierarchy. In other words, hierarchically structure is likely to leads to digital divide. Like other factors discussed above, culture also has interaction with others such as education and politic. In information-friendly culture, education is likely to encourage curiosity, innovation, technologies and teaches first and foremost skills of information retrieval rather than information itself. This is in favor of narrowing digital divide. Culture also has strong relationship with technologies which is always ignored. Most attempts to solve the problem of the digital divide have paid much attention on a shallow interpretation of technical literacy as simply learning computer programs, unaware that technological forms are culturally shaped and need to be reshaped to fit a wider variety of cultural styles and forms. Further more, in the perspective of political system, information friendly culture is likely to establish a form of communicative democracy. In this case, the direct democratic participation is a living practice via all groups in society. The legal system is likely to be an information-rich case-based system where access to information is vital to practice law. Culture is also crucial to economic system in regarding of digital divide. In nowadays information society, the running of economical system strongly depends on the dissemination which needs an information friendly environment. Particularly, a capable citizenship and capable institutions are able to avoid unintended and unwanted consequence’s occur.

In the angle of Internet structure, it is a typical flat network which does not have an authoritative center. In Internet, each vertex has similar chance to become a hub or center. According to the measures based on simple digital divide (Olmo and Monje, 2012), the patterns of European countries follow this discipline. Namely, the more a society matches the basic structure of an open information and communication network, the more it will benefit from the new information and communication technologies. For a nation especially with a long history, culture usually impact people’s attitudes in the context of information and communication such as how people deal with information, how important access to information is and the notion of knowledge. Just as the case study in terms of culture and globalization (Kim and Bhawuk, 2008) illustrates, the overall attitude towards information, communication, and knowledge in a society impact the understanding of digital development. For example, in certain nations with predominating ethical-religious values, the information technologies are seen as passive or negative for their life. In contrast, a society with open cultural circumstance will foster the development of information technologies via providing all groups in the society equal and universal access to available information, helping narrowing digital gap.

How to bridge digital divide in regarding of culture is more difficult because culture is immanent in society. In previous section, the point focuses on providing access to ICTs from software to hardware and basic IT literacy. The existing researches also lack enough attention in this angle. However, xx (Wang, 2011b) has indicated one of the critical ways to address digital inequalities is via addressing the fact that technologies are always created with cultural biases which limit their usage. Therefore, in terms of culture, narrowing digital divides should improve the quality and quantity of cultural diverse in new media like in Internet and video games. In corresponding, this will drive new media more effective when deal with economical and social inequalities. Another effective approach is encouraging and providing technical training for those people who live in the region where culture is conservative such as in Middle East (Zhang and Lan, 2010).