Theorizing Digital Divides 9781138210400, 9781315455334

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Theorizing Digital Divides

Although discussion of the digital divide is a relatively new phenomenon, social inequality is a deeply entrenched part of our current social world and is now reproduced in the digital sphere. Such inequalities have been described in multiple traditions of social thought and theoretical approaches. To move forward to a greater understanding of the nuanced dynamics of digital inequality, we need the theoretical lenses to interpret the meaning of what has been observed as digital inequality. This volume examines and explains the phenomenon of digital divides and digital inequalities from a theoretical perspective. Indeed, with there being a limited amount of theoretical research on the digital divide so far, Theorizing Digital Divides seeks to collect and analyse different perspectives and theoretical approaches in analysing digital inequalities, and thus propose a nuanced approach to study the digital divide. Exploring theories from diverse perspectives within the social sciences whilst presenting clear examples of how each theory is applied in digital divide research, this book will appeal to scholars and undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology of inequality, digital culture, Internet studies, mass communication, social theory, sociology, and media studies. Massimo Ragnedda is a Senior Lecturer in Mass Communication at Northumbria University, Newcastle. Glenn W. Muschert is a Professor of Sociology and Social Justice Studies at Miami University, Ohio, USA.

Routledge Advances in Sociology For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/SE0511

New Immigration Destinations Migrating to Rural and Peripheral Areas Ruth McAreavey Open Borders, Unlocked Cultures Romanian Roma Migrants in Western Europe Edited by Yaron Matras and Daniele Viktor Leggio Digital Music Distribution The Sociology of Online Music Streams Hendrik Storstein Spilker Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China Global Crisis and Innovation David Tyfield The Quantified Self in Precarity Work, Technology and What Counts Phoebe Moore Theorizing Digital Divides Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert Child Figures, Literature, and Science Fragile Subjects Edited by Jutta Ahlbeck, Päivi Lappalainen, Kati Launis and Kirsi Tuohela Mass Shootings in Comparative Perspective Communities and Shared Experiences in the Aftermath Johanna Nurmi Mega-Events as Economies of the Imagination Creating Atmospheres for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Rodanthi Tzanelli

Theorizing Digital Divides

Edited by Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-21040-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-45533-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

Introduction

1

Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert

Section 1

Using classical social theories to understand digital divide 1

The sociology of Simmel and digital divides: information, value, exchange, and sociation in the networked environment

9 11

Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson

2

Social capital and the three levels of digital divide

21

Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu

3

Do data analysts fill the role of the psychoanalyst? The contemporary digital divide and Freud’s theory

35

Tomohisa Hirata

4 The interpretive and ideal-type approach: rethinking digital non-use(s) in a Weberian perspective

48

Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead

Section 2

Associative and communicative perspectives 5

Disability and digital inequalities: rethinking digital divides with disability theory

61 63

Gerard Goggin

6

“The language metaphor”: an epistemological approach to the digital divide Lorenzo Dalvit

75

vi  Contents 7

Theorizing digital divides through the lens of the social construction of technology and social shaping of technology

88

Susan B. Kretchmer

8

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies: towards a spatial theory of the digital divide

103

John Haffner

9

A “recognitional perspective” on the twenty-first century’s digital divide

117

Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan

Section 3

Critical and alternative perspectives

131

10 Rethinking the information society: a decolonial and border gnosis of the digital divide in Africa and the Global South

133

Last Moyo

11 Digital divide in Turkey as a non-western country

146

Duygu Özsoy

12 This question of the Other presence: theorizing online representation and the voice of the digital subaltern

157

Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace

13 The digital divide and classifications: the inscription of citizens into the state

173

Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou

14 Gendered cyberhate: a new digital divide?

186

Emma Jane

Afterword: the state of digital divide theory

199

Jan van Dijk

Index

207

Introduction Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert

The core analysis in this book is to examine and explain the phenomena of ­digital divide and digital inequalities from a theoretical perspective. Indeed, only a small amount of theoretical research on digital divide has been carried out so far. Theorizing digital divide fills this gap by collecting different perspectives and theoretical approaches in analysing digital inequalities, and by proposing a more nuanced approach to study the digital divide. This book proposes some well-known theories (i.e. Weber, Bourdieu and Simmel) as well as hitherto untouched theoretical visions (i.e. neo-colonialism, recognitional perspective and non-western perspective) to explain this contemporary phenomenon. Theorizing digital divide brings together innovative work from a wide range of contexts and traditions which explicitly focus on the roles of theory in digital divide research. The book includes contextual and socio-historical analyses of existing traditions of theory and theorizing, exemplary use of theory and empirical work where theory has been used in innovative ways. Theorizing digital divide develops a very different standpoint. Each chapter takes core social theories and explains digital divide from a specific theoretical lens. In so doing authors offer several angles from which to look at the complexity of the phenomenon of digital divide. Indeed, although digital divide is a relatively new phenomenon (one of the first attempts to define it comes from Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1996), the inequalities (now reproduced in the digital sphere) are a deeply entrenched part of our current social world. Such inequalities have been described in multiple traditions of social thought and theoretical approaches. We cannot really understand the digital divide without seeing the broader picture in which we digitally engage. To understand such a picture we need the theoretical lens through which to give a meaning to the reality and transform observation to conceptualization. For this reason, we have invited scholars from different disciplines (Internet studies, sociology and media studies) to apply different theoretical approaches to provide a fresh perspective on the rise and persistence of digital and social inequalities. As part of the MeCCSA (Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association) conference 2015, the editors proposed a special track, namely “Theorizing digital divide”, in order to discuss, from a theoretical point of view, the phenomenon of the digital divide. We received forty-eight abstracts and

2  Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert selected eighteen of them for a total of four panels. It was exactly at the time that the idea of this book arose, following the useful discussion that that conference had generated. Indeed, for a couple of days authors have discussed with colleagues the importance and necessity of an overall book that included different theoretical approaches. In order to expand the theoretical perspectives brought to bear on social relations in digital spheres, we have invited scholars from different disciplines to apply social theories of stratification, inequalities, postmodernity, feminism, Marxism, etc., to develop new perspectives on the rise and persistence of digital inequalities. The idea, when we launched the call, was to bring together, in an edited volume, a variety of statements from scholars around the world, in which social theories are central to the discussion of digital divides. Thus, the core analysis in this edited collection is to examine and explain the phenomenon of digital divide from a broad range of theoretical perspectives. It presents theoretical frameworks generated by research from many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, political science, organizational studies and media studies. The idea beyond this collection of theoretical chapters is to stimulate innovative ways to study digital and social inequalities in digitally enabled networked societies. The theoretical approaches used to analyse the rise and persistence of digital divide have moved beyond the simple access to the Internet (first level of digital divide). Indeed, once we narrow down the gap in terms of access, new and more sophisticated issues arise, such as inequalities in use, skills, motivation and purpose of uses (second level of digital divide). Furthermore, new forms of inequalities arise in terms of opportunities and possibilities to improve one’s life chances by reinvesting in the social realm resources and knowledge acquired online. This is what could be defined as the third level of digital divide (Ragnedda, 2017). Indeed, one of the core aspects of this book is that the phenomena of digital divide, digital inequalities and digital inclusion/exclusion are social phenomena, rather than simply technological or economic phenomena. Indeed, as more aspects of social life are migrating and expanding online, systems of structured inequalities are now well-entrenched and replicated in the digital sphere. These new forms of inequalities have consequences both in the digital and social sphere, and new theoretical approaches and models are needed in order to provide the frameworks able to explain how specific features of society are linked to larger processes. Despite the vital importance of theories in providing insight on such issues, the development of the theoretical aspect of digital divide studies has lagged behind the development of more empirical studies. Traditional studies of digital divides have tended to be macro in scope, and often convey a flavour of government reporting on infrastructure and electronic capacities. Of course, there are many exceptions among scholars working in a variety of fields, however, even given a variety of national and cultural perspectives from which such studies emerge, the theoretical underpinnings of such studies often proceed from a narrow range of perspectives. The narrow stretch of social theories thus far applied to digital divides is surprising, given the diversity of theoretical developments which have developed in social theories, especially in the last half century. By bringing together the variety of theoretical approaches emerging in the study of digital divide, this volume

Introduction 3 highlights novel ways of thinking about digital divide that encompass broader perspectives and offers alternative ways to approach this issue. Indeed, there is too much emphasis on the technological, empirical and economic aspects of the digital society, while there is a lack of social scientific analysis. The technological trajectories themselves are insufficient bases for analysis of the digital divide, and rather it is the forms of online participation and digital inclusion that are based on cultural and social protocols of social closure that need analysis. While access, control and ownership have been at the centre of the analysis of the digital divide and digital inequalities, this book argues that the discussion on social equality and digital inclusion/exclusion should also address the theoretical aspects that help in understanding and decoding this complex issue. Indeed, the digital divide is a multidimensional, highly sophisticated and stimulating issue, and a broad range of theoretical approaches are useful in determining general explanations of this social phenomenon. Theoretical models of the digital divide usually represent digital divide as the result of different steps from motivation to access, from skills to uses and opportunities (DiMaggio et al., 2004). Although these frameworks propose a nuanced and deeper understanding of the digital divide, especially compared to the initial notion of haves and haves not, they often lack a holistic perspective and underestimate how the socio-cultural context shapes attitudes towards the Internet and its appropriation by the users. Along these lines, digital divide research has been criticized for oversimplifying the relationship between demographic characteristics and Internet use (Halford & Savage, 2010; Sims, 2014) and for its under-theorization (Van Dijk, 2006). This volume offers, from different theoretical angles, a holistic approach to digital divide, proposing several theoretical approaches to “read” and “decode” digital divide. This volume fills a gap in the literature by proposing a global perspective and including classic social theories as well as more contemporary approaches, and also under-studied theoretical approaches. These new perspectives offer a fresh overview to analyse the digital divide, often simply reduced as a matter of “access” or “skills”. Theorizing digital divide summarizes theories from such diverse perspectives while presenting clear examples of how these theories are applied in digital divide research. It presents in a single volume some of the best known schools of thought that have shaped the trajectory of social sciences studies and applied them to digital divide. This volume presents a comprehensive review and critique of the broad range of theoretical frameworks designed to explain the digital divide and its consequences in our daily life. Chapters are theoretical and (while some of them contain illustrative empirical evidence or examples) strongly feature the conceptual potential of theorizing digital divides in novel and intriguing ways. The present volume gathers contributions from scholars at all stages of their careers and from various relevant disciplines. While certainly well-established theoretical traditions have a place in this volume (as in those expressing the vision of foundational social theorists), we also gave space to areas which are perhaps less dominant or newer. The distinctive focus for this volume is the engagement with digital divide, articulating what explicitly different schools of thought may offer in explaining this current

4  Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert phenomenon. A wide range of theories of digital divide are accessibly presented in ways which will be illuminating for students and experienced researchers alike. The final aim is, indeed, to help the reader to expand their capacity for critical analysis, reflective practice and the personal evaluation of theoretical positions, in order to understand digital inequalities. This volume, therefore, proposes a more nuanced understanding of how theories and digital inequalities are related, and, above all, it shows how existing social theories, seen as the paradigms used to examine social phenomena, are still useful to understand a contemporary phenomenon, such as the digital divide. This volume systematically explores the relevance of theory in understanding and explaining the phenomenon of digital divide. Theorizing digital divide explores and demonstrates how theoretical approaches have much to offer in understanding interplay between existing and new inequalities in the context of a “digital age”. This book provides a grounded reconnection between study of the digital society and social theory as well as a reference point for future theoretical and empirical studies of the key aspects of digital society.

Organization of the book Theorizing digital divide encompasses several theoretical approaches from different perspectives. Some of the chapters are based on the classical social theoretical approaches, while others propose applications of more recent strains of social theory. For this reason, we split the book into three main sections that acknowledge the diversities of these approaches but also the necessity to ordering the chapters by perspectives and dividing the chapters into sections according to these themes. In the first section of this book, namely, “Using classical social theories to understand digital divide”, four different chapters discuss the phenomenon of digital divide using four well known approaches/theorists: Simmel, Bourdieu, Freud and Weber. More specifically, in the first chapter Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson explore how a Simmelian framework can be of use for the study of the digital divide. In this chapter the authors provide a framework for a sociology of information, developing a series of information-money analogies and arguing that information is an object of value whose flows are similar to that of money, and the control of information, like money, acts as a stratification resource. In the next chapter, Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu propose a perspective that investigates the potential new applications of social capital (following the differences proposed by Bourdieu, Coleman and Putman) in the context of digital divide and explores how social and digital capital are interrelated. More specifically, this chapter explores how social capital influences the three levels of digital divide. Tomohisa Hirata, in the third chapter of the first section, attempts to explain how we theorize the digital divide by using a psychoanalysis approach. Finally, the last chapter in the first section uses a Weberian approach to analyse the digital divide. In this chapter, Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead use Max Weber’s interpretive perspective (known as verstehen) and his concept of the

Introduction 5 ideal type to provide a theoretical framework that can critically explore non-use(s) and its different meanings and effects. Indeed, the Weberian perspective offers both a holistic and situational analysis of the digital divide and of what non-use signifies for social actors. In the second section of this volume we have included five theoretical approaches under a section called Associative and communicative perspectives. In the first chapter of this section, Gerard Goggin looks at disability and how it has had a chequered career when it comes to discussions, policies and practices addressing digital divides and digital inequalities. Over time disability has become an acknowledged element in digital inequality approaches, yet still it is often passed over briefly and not well understood. Goggin, in this chapter, argues that we need better theories of disability and digital divides. In the same vein, Lorenzo Dalvit, in the following chapter, proposes a theoretical framework to understand the relationship between mobile phones and disability, drawing on some personal as well as professional experiences. Dalvit specifically looks at mobile devices and how their contribution to addressing disability goes beyond the normalisation of cultural practices such as reading the news, posting on social networks, etc. They enable processes of participation by disabled people as unobtrusive assistive devices and as popular symbols of social inclusion. Susan Kretchmer, instead, explores the explanatory potential of social construction of technology, knowledge gap and social identity construction theories in developing new perspectives and deeper understandings of the rise and persistence of digital divides. In Chapter 8, John Haffner considers the geospatial arrangement of the physical Internet as well as its coded architecture to critique the notion that the digital divide is simply the representation of spaces that are either connected to or disconnected from Internet infrastructure. Instead, this chapter borrows arguments from the theoretical school of the subaltern to connect the digital divide to complex neo-colonial arrangements in the information age. Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan in the last chapter of the second section focus on the second order digital divide, referring to recognition theory evolved by Axel Honneth. Based on this theoretical perspective, the authors of this chapter ask how social media provides spheres of social recognition, and they examine experiences of recognition and misrecognition interrelated to reciprocal interactions within these spheres and how these are linked to social inequality and stratification. In the third and final section of this book, we give voice to five Critical and alternative perspectives. More specifically, in Chapter 10, Last Moyo, using the case study of Africa that hardly has any language and cultural presence online, uses decolonial and border analysis to argue that the Internet represents a virtual form of coloniality that is generally part of a broader matrix of power of Western modernity and capital. Looking at the dominance of Euro-American languages and content online, Last Moyo argues that the Internet reproduces colonialities of space, technology, being, power, knowledge and culture that cut off meaningful participation by Africans in the information society and knowledge economy. From this perspective, access and participation by Africans remains largely elitist and within the frames of reference set by the West. In the following chapter,

6  Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert Duygu Özsoy looks at the digital divide in Turkey as a non-western country and gives a summary of specific characteristics of Turkish political history for foreign readers by using Şeref Mardin’s studies as a central source. Furthermore, the author analyzes how competition between classes has an influence on web content production via Internet glossaries, and, finally, Özsoy discusses and evaluates relationships between Internet and civil participation and political participation in Turkey by using Şeref Mardin’s studies as a reference. In Chapter 12, Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace examine the digital divide concept and theorize it through the postcolonial lens of the subaltern or the Other. To ground this theory, the authors of this chapter collaboratively examine the digital representation and voice of one of the paper’s authors, Marilyn (an Australian Aboriginal Kuku Nyungkal senior woman), and discuss the structuring of the “Other” in digital divide theory. Their intersectional approach provides insights on experiences within structures of power whilst opening them to consider emergent challenges of ontologically diverse and ethical ways of digital knowing, accessing and benefit sharing. They argue the Internet is highly subversive, yet due to hegemonic structural inequalities, online interactions perform an intersectionality of digital presences, namely an online variation of a subaltern. This case study helps culturally contextualize theory around approaches to technological development and provides a postcolonial and critical contribution to digital divide theory and Internet studies. Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou, in Chapter 13, look at how the advent of modern forms of citizenship assumes identification. National registers are likely to foster amplified cultures of control as identification measures are harmonized and integrated within and across national borders (Lyon, 2007). This chapter considers how new spatial and geocentric categories of territorial fixation and stigmatization are re-introduced into socio-technical configurations. The authors focus on an illustrative case of a Danish mandatory digital mail system, used to shed light on how inequalities might be produced in contemporary digital societies. The monsters of a mandatory digital mail system, to use the notion of the exceptions that cannot be fitted into the category of the ordinary, are the people deprived of all the assets necessary to participate in various social games. Finally, Emma Jane uses feminist and hate speech theory to outline the threat posed to online participation and digital citizenship. Emma Jane highlights how the impact of gendered cyberhate on targets constitutes a barrier to online participation and digital citizenship and therefore constitutes a new dimension of the digital divide. It is our hope that this volume will provide a point of departure for a broader theoretical discussion and empirical analyses of digital divides. As a field, inequality studies are well-developed in a variety of disciplines, including sociology, however, the theoretical development of digital inequalities and divides provides rich ground for opening up new areas in the study of stratification. If readers will use the ideas presented here as a starting point for divergent theoretical debate and further empirical study of digital divides, then we will have done our job in bringing forward important conceptual work relevant to pushing the boundaries of our contemporary scholarly debate on digital inequalities.

Introduction 7

References DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Celeste, C., & Shafer, S. (2004). Digital inequality: from unequal access to differentiated use. In K. M. Neckerman (Ed.), Social inequality (pp. 355–400). New York, NY: Russell. Halford, S. & Savage, M., 2010. Reconceptualizing digital social inequality. Information, Communication & Society, 13(7), 937–955. Lyon D. (2007). National ID cards: crime control, citizenship & social sorting. Policing, 1(1), 111–118. Ragnedda, M. (2017). The third digital divide: a Weberian approach to digital inequalities. London, UK: Routledge. Sims, C. (2014). From differentiated use to differentiating practices: negotiating legitimate participation and the production of privileged identities. Information, Communication & Society, 17, 670–682. doi:10.1080/136 9118x.2013.808363. Van Dijk, J. (2006). Digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. Poetics, 34, 21–235.

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Section 1

Using classical social theories to understand digital divide

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1 The sociology of Simmel and digital divides Information, value, exchange, and sociation in the networked environment Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson Introduction Digital divides have been examined from a relatively narrow range of theoretical frameworks. As digital divides are forms of stratification, it is surprising that the wealth of sociological perspectives on inequality have to date been poorly applied to the topic. Indeed, it has been rather recent that even the classical sociological traditions have been systematically applied as lenses through which to interpret digital divides (e.g., see Witte & Mannon, 2010; Ragnedda & Muschert, 2013, 2015; Ragnedda, 2017). Following Marx and Muschert’s (2007, 2009) formulation of a sociology of information drawing from the thought of Georg Simmel, our aim is to explore how a Simmelian framework can be of use for the study of the digital divide. Simmel wrote about the nature and changing role of information in modern society in “The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies” (1906; 1908/1950, pp. 307–376). Connecting the latter essay with insights explicated from The Philosophy of Money (1900/1978), we conceive of information as a form of currency/medium of exchange. Those with greater capacity to create, understand, control, and utilize information are relatively empowered, in relation to those with lesser capacity. As a form of currency or exchange, information has the unique property that, as Erving Goffman (1969) noted, it is the only form of property that need not be diminished in value by being shared. Although we focus on two of Simmel’s works below—his chapter on secrecy (1908/1950, pp. 307–376) and treatise on money (1900/1978)—it may be helpful to briefly comment on Simmel’s sociology and influence. The immediate attraction of Simmel (1950) for the study of the digital divide, and digital interaction in general, is his conception of society as “the name for a number of individuals, connected in interaction” (p. 10). From dyadic interactions to large-scale institutions, society is nothing more than continual interactions between individuals that “crystalize” into autonomous forms, which in turn condition, and are conditioned by, individuals. The primary task of the sociologist is to abstract from the transitory, fluid, and diverse concrete content of social life mediated by interests, movements, drives, and purposes (Simmel, 1908/1950, pp. 40–41) to decipher common “forms of sociation,” a “systematically ambiguous” (Oakes, 1980, p. 10) concept that Coser (1977, p. 181) argued is nearly synonymous with social structure.

12  Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson Social forms—such as conflict, cooperation, exchange, secrecy, friendship, and subordination and superordination—are the unconsciously or consciously created and accepted frameworks that provide order, coherence, and meaning in social life and constrain and enable individual action. Although Simmel was a nonconforming “stranger” in the academy who died without intellectual protégées (Coser, 1965; Levine, 1971), his thought has influenced the development of social theory. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Simmel influenced thinkers as diverse as Georg Lukács, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Robert E. Park, and Karl Mannheim (Coser, 1977, p. 199; Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, pp. 282f). In the mid-twentieth century, Simmel’s thought figures heavily in functionalist conflict theory (Coser, 1956) and exchange theory (Homans, 1958; Blau, 1964). His insights have experienced a “revival” since the 1970s (e.g., Levine, 1971; Frisby, 1981), informing areas from urban sociology (e.g., Bouchet, 1998) to postmodern theory (e.g., Weinstein & Weinstein, 2013). It is our contention that Simmel’s ideas provide fruitful insights for the study of the digital divide as well. In what follows, we first outline a framework for a sociology of information, as formulated by Marx and Muschert (2007, 2009). Following, pertinent themes from Simmel’s works on secrecy (1906; 1908/1950, pp. 307–376) and the money economy (1900/1978) are summarized. We then develop a series of informationmoney analogies. Most importantly, we argue that information is an object of value whose flows are similar to that of money and that the control of information, like money, acts as a stratification resource. Our aim is primarily exploratory, and intended to open up a further dialogue regarding the relevancy of Simmel’s ideas to the study of digital divides. As such, this piece is necessarily conceptual and offers sensitizing principles to be applied and tested in further empirical study. In particular, we offer ideas for applying Marx and Muschert’s (2009) sociology of information, rooted in Simmel, as a point of departure for defining information as something of value and as a medium of exchange (or something which can be circulated via exchange).

The sociology of information Information and flows of information are crucial aspects of the network society, and may fruitfully be linked to Simmel’s concepts of information and value, as suggested by Marx and Muschert (2009). The role of information in society is governed not only by technological and economic limitations, but also by social norms, including both formal (e.g., laws and policies) and informal (e.g., etiquette, ethical principles, and standards of decency) sets of expectations and controls for how information should be managed. Such a framework has already been developed, as follows in Table 1.1. These principles refer primarily to sociological (and behavioral) aspects of information handling, and as related to digital divide studies would focus more on the human dimensions of digital inequalities than on the technical and economical. The field of digital divide studies is indeed the domain of sociologists, a discipline

The sociology of Simmel and digital divides 13 Table 1.1  Elements of a sociology of information 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Operationally defines and keeps distinct (yet notes relations among) a family of concepts encompassing personal, group, and organizational information—e.g., privacy and publicity, public and private, personal and impersonal data, surveillance and surveillance neutralization, secrecy, confidentiality, anonymity, pseudoanonymity, identifiability, and confessions. Identifies the characteristics of the data gathering/blocking and communication techniques—both those inherent and socially determined by policy and practices. Identifies the stated goals and latent consequences. Identifies role relationships and other social structural aspects including types of borders and directional flows and content of information and information accessibility (reciprocity and symmetry). Identifies spatial and locational aspects. Identifies the type of information involved. Identifies the form of the data. Identifies cultural themes and symbols which provide meaning and direction in telling us how information gathering and communication should be judged and how we should experience it. Identifies the social process aspects.

Source: Marx & Muschert, 2007, p. 382. Note: Marx & Muschert (2007, p. 384) also offer tested (or testable) hypotheses which apply the sociology of information framework to the sub-field of surveillance studies. Such an application is illustrative of how this framework can be applied to digital divide studies.

which includes a long-standing endeavor to understand the dynamics of deviance and social control, as specifically applied to information in the digital sphere. The sociological concepts of norms, deviance, and social control become crucial to digital divide studies, as indeed these have often been identified as fundamental to the entire field of sociology (see Gibbs, 1981). There is a need for nuanced articulation of the mechanisms/social practices behind the creation and (re)definition of social norms related to information, and this need extends way beyond the formal, and into the informal sphere. There is also a need to examine the transgression of such norms (which in itself helps to define that the norm exists, and is especially instructive in cases where the norms are unwritten and informal). Finally, there is great potential in examining the varying forms of control responses which emerge as rule transgressions are identified. As the sociology of the network society emerged in the past quarter century (see e.g., Castells, 2000; van Dijk, 2012), Simmel is often cited as (at least) suggesting the possibility of studying social challenges arising from the expansion of digital networked communications technologies. In his broad examinations of social forms in a period of rapid social change, Simmel offered sensitizing principles that remind contemporary researchers to be mindful of the effects of (post)modernization, organizational forms, economic relations and transitions, and qualities of (inter)personal experience in the networked world. New social forms have emerged as digital technologies developed along with the network society. One might consider the utility of Simmel’s principles and the sociology

14  Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson of information framework presented here as useful in examining digital forms in the network society, such as email and social media platforms. For example, the displacement of face-to-face relations as electronic communications expand is one aspect of social interactions fundamentally altered in the network society. More broadly, however, is the need to understand with precision the social and behavioral aspects of such changes. Digital divide studies have brought attention to the social inequalities in the digital sphere, which may fruitfully be studied via Simmel’s ideas about the control of information and the money economy.

Simmel on secrecy and money Secrecy and information Like most of his work, Simmel’s (1906; 1908/1950, pp. 307–376) writing on secrecy covers a wide range of topics, including lying, secret societies, marriage, and betrayal, and partakes in recurrent sweeps from the particular to the general to finding the general in the particular. Underneath this diversity, as Marx and Muschert (2009) stress, there is a buried sociological theory of information. We focus on his attention to how the function and flow of information changes in modern societies as well as secrecy as one form of information control. As Simmel made clear, all social interaction depends on some degree of knowledge of the other individual or group. Yet complete knowledge and transparency would make social interaction impossible. Without full information in interaction, both parties must make assumptions about the other. Modern societies increase social differentiation and the number of social circles in which individuals belong (Simmel, 1908/1955). Unlike premodern societies in which individuals are more likely to know, and know more about, the others with whom they are interacting, modern urban societies are increasingly structured around interactions where trust based on objective interests replaces personal knowledge of the other. For example, membership in an interest group requires little personal knowledge of others for interaction. Or, daily interaction with strangers and mere acquaintances alters the meaning of confidence in and knowledge about others. The function and role of information, and the deliberate withholding of information (the secret), change in modern societies. Simmel (1908/1950, p. 336) argued that secrecy increases in private affairs and decreases in public affairs. Yet, as Marx and Muschert (2009) point out, the rise and development of new information technologies has altered the role of and techniques for the deliberate withholding and control of information. Although logistical barriers may increase due to the huge volume of information available, “[i]n some ways there are now fewer secrets and we see the increased standardization of information” (Marx & Muschert, 2009, p. 220). The simultaneous increase in the availability of information, as well as an increased means (and standardization) to store and control it, via new information technologies, has altered the role of information as a form of value, exchange, and credit-worthiness. “For many individuals, property does not fully gain its significance with mere ownership, but only with the consciousness

The sociology of Simmel and digital divides 15 that others must do without it. … Moreover, since the others are excluded from the possession—particularly when it is very valuable—the converse suggests itself psychologically, namely, that what is denied to many must have special value” (Simmel, 1908/1950, p. 332) Exchange and money The Philosophy of Money (Simmel, 1900/1978) was both an analysis of the social implications of the rise of money as the predominant medium used in economic exchange (the money economy) and of the social characteristics of money. For Simmel, the increasingly widespread use of money as the medium for economic exchange not only altered the exchange form, but all forms of sociation. Money is both a reflection of and a cause for social differentiation and individuation and casting social relations into their modern characteristics: as instrumentally rational, calculative, impersonal, etc. (Coser, 1977). The money economy has fundamentally transformed the way individuals can experience and valuate the world of society and things. On the one hand, the money economy has furthered the freedom of individuals from moral and group restraints and increased options for self-expression, yet, on the other hand, it has increased the prevalence of impersonal relations (Simmel, 1900/1978, Ch. 4). While the work crosses disciplinary boundaries (Frisby, 1984, p. 95) and, like his work on secrecy, touches on a great deal of themes, two topics are of particular interest to us here: (1) valuation in exchange and (2) how the qualities of money shape the modern exchange form. Simmel’s (1900/1978, esp. pp. 82–90) treatise on the money economy is partially founded around a theory of value in the context of exchange interactions, specifically the economic exchange form mediated by money. He argued that the value of objects derives from their relative scarcity and desirability. For Simmel (1900/1978, pp. 66–69, 89–90), something becomes an object of desire precisely because we cannot immediately have it and a value results from the “distance” of a desired object from a desiring subject. Or, the value of an object lies in “the extent to which it is both desired and unattainable” (Turner & Beeghley, 1981, p. 267). The exchange form developed so that the value arising from a deferred desire can be consumed. While Simmel (1900/1978, pp. 82ff) argued most interactions involve some form of exchange or reciprocity, even if only the exchange of “personal energy,” economic exchange is a distinct type of the exchange form that always involves an exchange of sacrifices, or “the surrender of something in order to gain something” (p. 87). All economic exchange involves, first, a desire for an object; second, identifying another who possesses this object; third, an offer of a different object of value for the desired object; and, fourth, the acceptance of the offer (Turner & Beeghley, 1981, p. 292). Although the economic exchange form retains these basic characteristics in the money economy, it is transformed by money, or, “the reified function of being exchanged” (Simmel, 1900/1978, p. 176). Among its many unique qualities, money is a generalized measure of or yardstick for value, both as an “abstract

16  Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson Table 1.2  Principles of economic exchange 1 The more actors perceive as valuable each other’s respective resources, the more likely is an exchange relationship to develop among these actors. 2 The greater is the intensity of an actor’s needs for a resource of a given type, and the less available is that resource, the greater is the value of that resource to the actor. 3 The more an actor perceives as valuable the resources of another actor, the greater is the power of the latter over the former. 4 The more “liquid” are an actor’s resources, the greater will be the exchange options and alternatives, and hence, the greater will be the power of that actor in social exchanges. Source: Turner & Beeghley, 1981, pp. 303–305, abridged.

system of measurement” and a “means of exchange” (Simmel, 1900/1978, p. 122). Money is the “purest example of the tool” (p. 210) precisely due to its abstractness: “people can use it in so many ways to manipulate the environment in order to obtain their goals” (Turner & Beeghley, 1981, p. 290). Its abstractness and liquidity accounts for the increased ability to calculate and compare qualitatively distinct, or formerly incommensurable, experiences and objects of value commensurable and reduces the valuation of unlike objects and experiences (e.g., artworks) to quantitative assessments. It also increases the ability to form more social ties in different social circles and across space, or, can make an “effect-ata-distance” (e.g., the ability to invest in geographically remote affairs) (Simmel, 1908/1950, p. 335; see also 1900/1978, pp. 180ff), as well as the pace of and opportunities for social exchange and other interactions. Turner and Beeghley (1981, pp. 303–305) derived a number of general principles from The Philosophy of Money, and they appear here as an additional set of sensitizing principles to identify value in economic exchange. Of course, the present focus is to apply such notions of value to information as a means and unit of exchange (although Simmel’s principles can be applied to any modality of exchange). Principles related to the economic exchange form in general appear in Table 1.2. Turner and Beeghley (1981, pp. 303–305) also provide some general principles related specifically to the effect of exchange of money in social life. All have applications for the exchange of information. An especially relevant argument is the claim that the following factors in a social system increase along with greater use of generalized and symbolic media of exchange: the volume of exchange relations; the rate of social exchange; the scope of social exchange; the multiplicity of social ties and exchanges; and, the differentiation of power to regulate social relations and exchanges.

Information as an object of value The preceding section summarized Simmel’s ideas about secrecy and the money economy relevant to our project. This section attempts to bring these two lines of analysis together in two steps. First, we present a series of money-information

The sociology of Simmel and digital divides 17 analogies, a fitting technique considering Simmel’s fondness for argumentation by analogy. Second, we provide a series of sensitizing principles for the study of the digital divide. Simmel (1908/1950, p. 335) has already briefly explained how the money economy has increased opportunities for secrecy (e.g., the ability to make investments at a distance). However, we are concerned with the similarities between the flow, exchange, and characteristics of money and information. Marx and Muschert (2009) described a number of similarities between money and information. First, information, like money, is a generalized medium of exchange, and therefore is crucial for creating relations/networks unrestricted by location. Second, in this regard, we can also conceive of the flow of information as conceptually analogous to the flow of money in financial relations. As a means of exchange and a perceived unit of value in itself, information serves as a scarce resource. It follows that information, like money, can act as a stratification resource, both in that its unequal dissemination/access/utility can be crucial to the stratification system, but also as information serves as a unit of value. To relate directly to Simmel, we can see secrecy is a form of “inner property” which can be exchanged for money and power. We observe that being among the cognoscenti is a privileged position, as people who are considered especially informed tend to receive social deference. For Simmel, the value of information often lies in its scarcity and the ability to restrict access to it. These sensitizing principles are summarized in Table 1.3. Of course, money and information are different substances and have different functions. For instance, information is not an interchangeable, standardized, and abstract measure of value like money. Our main point, however, is that information is an object of value whose flows are similar to that of money, and the control of information, like money, acts as a stratification resource. Perhaps to complicate the issue, we also note the convergence of information and financial forms of exchange as funds transfers and payments increasingly take place in the digital sphere. Bouchet (1998) has argued that electronic money and its transfer have redefined social relations in a way that makes the money economy even less personal. Today, one need not even meet another person or enter a materially situated institution to exchange money and goods. Similarly, one certainly does not need to meet another person in order to exchange information. Table 1.3  Principles of information exchange and stratification The more actors perceive as valuable each other’s respective information resources, the more likely is an exchange relationship to develop among these actors. The greater is the intensity of an actor’s needs for information of a given type, and the less available is that information, the greater is the value of that information to the actor. The more an actor perceives as valuable the information of another actor, the greater is the power of the latter over the former. Source: Turner & Beeghley, 1981, pp. 303–305, revised and abridged.

18  Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson

Conclusion Information is a unit of value in the network society that has important social dimensions in which the sociological aspects governing the creation, maintenance, and enforcement of social norms play a crucial role. This chapter attempts to show how Simmel’s ideas about secrecy, as developed in Marx and Muschert’s (2009) sociology of information, and exchange may be helpful for conceptualizing digital divides. Future empirical work should apply and test the sensitizing principles developed above. There are also themes from Simmel’s later work not explored in this essay that could contribute to studies of digital life and the digital divide in particular. His focus on life as a ceaseless flow of vital energy underlying all interactions (e.g., Simmel, 1918/2010)—a concept found throughout his work (Schermer & Jary, 2013, p. 12)—could be recast in the context of digital interaction and information flows, a growing theme in contemporary social theory (Lash, 2006). Relatedly, his analysis of the tragedy (Simmel, 1911/1968) or conflict (Simmel, 1918/1968) of culture could be used as a framework for interpreting the way in which digital culture is created and fostered by individuals yet comes to dominate and constrain its users/knowers and non-users/non-knowers. Indeed, this is in line with Simmel’s own concerns with the place of technology in modern society (Garcia, 2005; Gunderson, 2017). For example, in the (post) modern world, people are bombarded by information, especially through digital technologies, yet they are unsure of the meaning, importance, origin, validity, etc. of various pieces of information. Instead of increasing clarity and understanding, each bit of information that a person receives increases confusion and the feeling that their handle on information is slipping away. The general response to this is that people become blasé about information, and, thus, their grasp on reality. This clarifies the need for increased intensity and frequency of spectacle to break through this blasé attitude. Another area for future research would entail an integration of Marxian and Simmelian themes to develop a more comprehensive framework. Even as an attempt to locate Marx’s framework “in the very structure of the life-world of human beings” (Salomon, 1965, p. 135), or, “to construct a new storey beneath historical materialism,” Simmel’s (1900/1978, p. 56) treatise on the money economy has received mixed reception from Marxist and neo-Marxist sociologists (for review, see Bottomore & Frisby, 1978, pp. 22ff). One potential criticism leveled by Marxist sociologists relevant for digital divide studies concerns Simmel’s conflation of the exchange of economic goods in general and commodity exchange in particular. While it is outside the scope of this essay to analyze the implications of this critique in our money-information analogies—which, as a result, may appear as ahistorical principles and incapable of providing a foundation for critique of the digital divide—we acknowledge that Marxist insights would be complementary here. For example, information can only act as a macro-level stratification resource if information production, access, and use are commodified. Conversely, Simmel’s focus on circulation, exchange, and consumption has much to offer (neo-)Marxist studies of the digital divide.

The sociology of Simmel and digital divides 19

References Ashley, D., & Orenstein, D. M. (2001). Sociological theory: classical statements. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Bottomore, T., & Frisby, D. (1978). Introduction to the translation. In The philosophy of money (pp. 1–49). (T. Bottomore & D. Frisby, Trans.). Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bouchet, D. (1998). Information technology, the social bond and the city: Georg Simmel updated. Built Environment, 24(2/3), 104–133. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Coser, L. A. (1956). The functions of social conflict. New York, NY: The Free Press. Coser, L. A. (1965). The stranger in the academy. In L. A. Coser (Ed.), Georg Simmel (pp. 29–39). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Coser, L. A. (1977). Masters of sociological thought: ideas in historical and social context (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers. Frisby, D. (1981). Sociological impressionism: a reassessment of Georg Simmel’s social theory. London, England: Heinemann. Frisby, D. (1984). Georg Simmel. London, England: Tavistock Publications. Garcia, J. L. (2005). Simmel on culture and technology. Simmel Studies, 15(2), 123–178. Gibbs, J. (1981). Norms, deviance, and social control: conceptual matters. New York, NY: Elsevier. Goffman, E. (1969). Strategic interaction. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gunderson, R. (2017). The problem of technology as valuation errors: the paradox of the means in Simmel and Scheler. Technology in Society, 48, 64–69. Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63(6), 597–606. Lash, S. (2006). Life (vitalism). Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 323–329. Levine, D. N. (1971). Introduction. In D. N. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel on individuality and social forms (ix-lxv). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Marx, G. T., & Muschert, G. W. (2007). Personal information, borders, and the new surveillance studies. Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences, 3, 375–395. Marx, G. T., & Muschert, G. W. (2009). Simmel on secrecy: a legacy and inheritance for the sociology of information. In C. Papilloud & C. Rol (Eds), Soziologie als Möglickeit 100: Jahre Georg Simmels untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (pp. 217–233). Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Oakes, G. (1980). Introduction. In G. Oakes (Ed., Trans.), G. Simmel (Author), Essays on interpretation in social science (pp. 3–94). Totowa, NJ: Roman and Littlefield. Ragnedda, M. (2017). The third digital divide: a Weberian approach to digital inequalities. New York, NY: Routledge. Ragnedda, M., & Muschert, G. W. (eds). 2013. The digital divide: the Internet and social inequality in international perspective. New York, NY: Routledge Publishing. Ragnedda, M., & Muschert, G. W. (eds). 2015. Special section on “Weber and digital divide studies.” International Journal of Communication, 9, 2757–2837. Salomon, A. (1965). Money and alienation. In L. A. Coser (Ed.), Georg Simmel (pp. 135–137). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Schermer, H., & Jary, D. (2013). Form and dialectic in Georg Simmel’s sociology: a new interpretation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

20  Glenn W. Muschert and Ryan Gunderson Simmel, G. (1900/1978). The philosophy of money. (T. Bottomore & D. Frisby, Trans.). Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Simmel, G. (1906). The sociology of secrecy and secret societies. American Journal of Sociology, 11(4), 441–498. Simmel, G. (1908/1950). The sociology of Georg Simmel. K. H. Wolff (Ed., Trans.). New York, NY: The Free Press. Simmel, G. (1908/1955). The web of group-affiliations. In Conflict & the web of groupaffiliations (pp. 127–195). (R. Bendix, Trans.). New York, NY: The Free Press. Simmel, G. (1911/1968). On the concept of the tragedy of culture. The conflict in modern culture and other essays (pp. 27–46). (K. Peter Etzkorn, Trans.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Simmel, Georg. (1918/1968). The conflict of modern culture. The conflict in modern culture and other essays (pp. 11–26). (K. Peter Etzkorn, Trans.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Simmel, G. (1918/2010). The view of life: four metaphysical essays. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Turner, J. H., & Beeghley, L. (1981). The emergence of sociological theory. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press. Van Dijk, J. (2012). The network society, (3rd ed.). London, England: Sage. Weinstein, D., & Weinstein, M. (2013). Postmodern(ized) Simmel. New York, NY: Routledge. Witte, J. C., & Mannon, S. E. (2010). The Internet and social inequalities. New York, NY: Routledge.

2 Social capital and the three levels of digital divide Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu

Introduction Although the relation between the Internet and social capital has been largely investigated (Wellman, 2001; Vergeer and Pelzer, 2009; Hampton, Sessions, and Her, 2011), the nature of such relation is still unclear. The ongoing dispute is still between two opposite positions emphasized in the really early stage of Internet studies (Wellman, 2001): on the one hand, the Internet increases and improves social relationships (Lévy, 1997); on the other, it negatively affects face-to-face relationships (Stoll, 1995). A number of studies have implicitly investigated that relation by emphasizing the role of the Internet in promoting both new democratic, participatory and open spaces (Sproull and Kiesler, 1991; Kapor, 1993), and collective action (Frantzich, 1999; Diani, 2000). This enthusiastic attitude, which we can define as a “techno-evangelist” approach, sees the Internet as a place of freedom in which people (with similar and different perspectives) meet up for “building” something together. According to this approach, the virtual space gives to users a “power capital”, represented by freedom of choices and democratic spaces of discussion. In these virtual spaces, citizens have the power to decide and mobilize people and resources towards a common objective. By contrast, a “techno-skeptic” approach sees the other side of the coin, in which Internet users increase their activity online while decreasing and weakening their social interactions and civil participation offline (Kraut et al., 1998; Gladwell, 2010; Fenton and Barassi, 2011). More specifically, earlier studies show how online activities may also enhance and increase social, human and economic capital (Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008; Hassani, 2006). These are part of a broader body of research that has focused on how social capital may affect digital divide (Chen, 2013; DiMaggio and Cohen, 2003). Literature on this relationship mainly refers to how the digital divide may increase the inequalities in terms of possession of social capital (Pénard and Poussing, 2010; DiMaggio et al., 2004; Katz and Rice, 2003). More specifically, Kvasny (2006), Robinson (2009) and Sims (2014) adapted Bourdieu’s theory to the Internet and new media research. This chapter proposes a nuanced perspective which investigates the potential new applications of social capital in the context of digital divide and explores how social and digital capitals are interrelated. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is twofold: first, shedding light into the reciprocal influences existing between

22  Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu social capital and digital divide; and second, emphasising how digital capital is a distinctive form of capital, but strongly intertwined with other types of capital (e.g. economic, social, cultural). More specifically, this chapter attempts to investigate the interrelation between social capital and the three levels of digital divide (Ragnedda, 2017). The analysis here proposed regards not only how access to the Internet (first level of digital divide) influences and is influenced by social capital, but above all how users/citizens use the Internet, what they use it for (second level of digital divide) and the returning benefits of using it (third level of digital divide). Second, in analysing the relationship between social and digital capital we shall mainly focus on the differences and similarities outlined by three key authors (Putman, Coleman and Bourdieu) and, finally, we shall attempt to provide a more nuanced definition of digital capital. Indeed, while literature often refers to digital capital, there is still a lack of a clear definition of this concept. In the majority of cases the concept of digital capital is used with regard to the resources upon which the development of new products and services for the digital economy rely (see e.g. Tapscott et al., 2000; Roberts and Townsend, 2015). In order to do this, we will first explore the multidimensionality of social capital by analysing the main traditional approaches to social capital and how they can be applied to the study of social and digital inequalities; then, in the second section, we will focus on the evolution from digital divide to digital inequalities and on how digital capital may influence both social and digital inequalities; then, as indicative examples, we will discuss five macro-areas through which one may observe the interrelationships between social and digital capital and, finally, we draw some conclusions.

Social capital: a multidimensional and controversial concept Social capital lends itself to a multiplicity of definitions depending on the theoretical perspective from which it is observed. In the following, we will focus on some “classic” definitions of social capital (and its constitutive elements) that can be applied to analyse the Internet experience. Ties/human interrelationship, trust and environments/norms (see Figure 2.1) are recognised to enhance social capital. In this direction, Coleman, influenced by Loury, is interested in the human relations that favour trustworthiness and improve cooperation. In this vein, he defined social capital as “a variety of entities having two characteristics in common: they all consist of some aspects of a social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure” (Coleman, 1990: 304). Social capital is, then, rooted in relationships between individuals (Coleman, 1990). This makes social capital different than other forms of capital. Indeed, while economic capital is characterised by the possession of means of production, and human capital is based on the individual skills, social capital is “the value of those aspects of social structure to actors, as resources that can be used by the actors to realize their interests” (Coleman, 1990: 305). Coleman picked out two elements upon which the creation of social capital depends: trustworthiness of an individual’s social environment, and the extent of obligations certain

Social capital and the levels of digital divide 23

Figure 2.1 Interrelationships between social, economic, cultural, digital capital and online activities.

people hold. Following this perspective, individual actions and goals are shaped by their environments and the social norms surrounding them. Coleman sees social capital as an “individual resource” in which social ties are decoded as harbingers of opportunities for the individual. Instead, Putnam (1993) sees social capital as a “collective resource”. However, people environments are viewed as trustees of public resources and as a function of individual objectives. Hence, social capital is a “collective resource” that increases individual/collective benefits. More specifically, he defines social capital as “the trust, norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement, which increase the efficiency of society by facilitating coordination between individuals” (Putnam, 1993, 1995). Therefore, trust and cooperative skills are determined by shared values and this mirrors some of Coleman’s ideas of capital stemming from socialisation within the community.

24  Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu Finally, Bourdieu defines social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationship of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words to membership in a group – which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word” (Bourdieu, 1986: 248). The social relationship is central, as it allows access to the resources held by other members of the group to which a person belongs. The proposed approaches to social capital assume that some aspects, such as (strong/weak) ties, “size”/quality of social networks, visibility/role of members in the network, knowledge, trust and freedom can play a primary role in increasing (or affirming, in Bourdieu’s perspective) social status of individuals. As we will deepen in the following sections by giving concrete examples, these elements are relevant also in the Internet experience: they are able to both reproduce offline social structure, and privilege the privileged. Values, trust, reciprocity and norms can be also considered constitutive elements of a “valuable” online experience that allows users to gather benefits from their participation in a “virtual community”. This suggests that the existing social capital of Internet users based on relationships and trust among people (located in specific places) may facilitate the creation of “virtual communities” (specific environments characterised by external and internal norms, trust and reciprocity) aimed at producing benefits for their members. This might reflect Bourdieu’s interpretation of social capital as something which has a value. He related “good social capital” to the amount of connections each individual has (the more the better), and the assets they gain from their social ties is almost like a profit they have earned through their investment in these relationships. At the same time, applying Bourdieu’s definition of social capital to the Internet experience means assuming that social capital produces and reproduces inequality even in the online sphere, thus working alongside cultural and economic capital; all adding up for individuals to reach their own self-interest. In such perspective, social capital is functional to the maintenance and reproduction of the existing social structure (see also Field, 2008) both offline and online. In others words, Bourdieu’s view strays away from the humanistic side of social capital, towards a more “selfish position” that sees investments in people as purely worked on just to reap the rewards of what they will receive in return. By contrast, applying Putnam’s definition of social capital to the study of the Internet experience means adopting a less economic point of view by prioritising civic engagement as the most capital for individuals, such as educational groups, charity organisations or even something recreational like a book club. All the above mentioned approaches to social capital highlight the multidimensionality of the concept. As we will see in the next paragraphs, different “online environments” lead to the emergence of particular nuances of the social capital concept. However, as we will clarify in the following, it appears that the digital capital is more likely to reflect Bourdieu’s definition of social capital by reproducing online the offline social structures and inequalities.

Social capital and the levels of digital divide 25 In the forthcoming paragraphs, exploring the possibility that the social capital might maintain and reproduce the existing offline social inequalities online, we shall try to discuss how the social capital decreases or increases in the context of Internet experience and how social capital affects the three levels of digital divide.

Social capital and the three levels of digital divide In the following, we explore how social capital influences the three levels of digital divide. Indeed, as highlighted by a large piece of literature, social, economic and cultural capital not only generate digital divide between people who can and cannot access the Internet (first level of digital divide), but also inequalities in terms of motivation, skills and purpose of use (second level of digital divide) and inequalities in terms of (social/cultural/economic/personal/political) benefits they can gain online (third level of digital divide). A large part of literature investigates the role of social, cultural, economic and demographic variables in influencing the Internet experiences. What is common among these studies is that while each focuses on a specific set of variables, there is a strong connection between the cultural, social and economic background of users and Internet use (see van Deursen, van Dijk and Peters, 2011; Helsper, 2012; van Deursen et al., 2014; van Deursen and van Dijk, 2015). The initial technocratic approach to the digital divide as a social and cultural phenomenon that underlines inequality in providing access to technology is outdated. This approach, defined as the first level of digital divide, saw digital divide in terms of “have and have not”. Such approach has been nuanced, over the years, by different theoretical models that emphasise digital inequalities as a consequence of different motivations, different skills, different use and different opportunities, creating what has been defined as the second level of digital divide (Hargittai and Walejko, 2008; van Dijk, 2006). In other words, we have progressed from the first level, based on access to the Internet, to a more sophisticated level, based on the inequalities in information communication technology (ICT) and Internet use (Attewell, 2001). Ragnedda (2017), moving from a Weberian perspective, introduced a new level of digital divide, based on the social and cultural benefits deriving from accessing and using the Internet. The third level of digital divide is strongly tied with different types of capitals and specifically with social capital. Indeed, the new form of digital divide emphasises inequalities in reinvesting in the social realm, valuable information and knowledge acquired online. The returning social benefits of using the Internet are influenced by the previous position in the social system (Ragnedda, 2017). Indeed, we do not access the Internet as a tabula rasa (blank slate), but on the background of our own social, cultural, political and personal capital. More specifically, users’ background influences the way they search and process information online, which in turn can represent opportunities (van Dijk and van Deursen, 2014) that could be spent on the market (Ragnedda, 2017). Our previous background, thus, influences how we access and use the Internet (first and second level of digital divide) and how we reinvest valuable information in the social realm (third level of digital divide) to improve

26  Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu our life chances. As shown in Figure 2.1, social, cultural and economic capitals contribute towards generating digital capital, which in turn influences the number and types of online activities, thus producing effects on social/cultural/economic capitals as well (van Deursen et al., 2014). The circular relationship, visualised in Figure 2.1, shows both how the digital and social capitals are directly interconnected and how traditional social inequalities are replicated, if not reinforced, by digital inequalities (see also Mason and Hacker, 2003; Helsper, 2012). Despite the interconnections between all forms of capitals, such as economic, cultural, social and personal (Helsper, 2012), in this chapter we are mainly focusing on the role of social capital in influencing Internet use (second level of digital divide) and returning benefits (third level of digital divide).

Interrelationships between digital and social capital Social capital can be conceptualised in a number of different ways. As a consequence, given the multidimensionality of the concept, mutual relationships might be identified between digital and social capital. Following the above mentioned approaches to the relations between ICTs and social capital, we focus on five macro-areas in which the digital and social capital influence each other by reinforcing some of their constitutive features and weakening others. The following discussion does not pretend to be exhaustive; however, it gives some concrete examples that support the interaction model proposed in Figure 2.1. It can be summarised as follows: Virtual communities (strong ties): the Internet may become a trust-based platform for sharing interests, informing people, disseminating information and increasing citizens’ engagement (Boyd and Ellison, 2007) by bringing together people who share common goals. In this sense the multidimensionality of social capital, as described by Putnam, which consists of values, trust, reciprocity and civic engagement, seems to be satisfied. The concept of “Electronic Agorà” has been explored by an extensive and sometimes contradictory literature (Abbate, 1999; Castells, 2001; Benkler, 2006). In some cases, the concept of “virtual community” has been adopted to explain the capability of the Internet to create “deterritorialized spaces” in which financial resources, information, knowledge and power flow (Fisher, 1982; Wellman, 1979). In other cases, this concept has been criticised due to its inability to substitute (but only reinforce) the “territorialized community” (Rheingold, 1993; Castells, 2001). However, building a “virtual community” does not automatically mean mobilising people in real life. There is a tangible risk that the virtual engagement might become a simple “click activism” (Gladwell, 2010; Morozov, 2010). However, in some other cases, social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) can work as platforms for sharing information and organising mobilisation when they are already set up in real life (Shirky, 2011). Following this direction, it seems that the “virtual communities” included in the individual “digital capital” of users rely on an already existing social capital based on relationships and trust among people located in specific places. At the

Social capital and the levels of digital divide 27 same time, the Internet might become a connector for “social movements” that work in different contexts but share information and useful insights, widening their social networks and promoting cooperation (see Ruiu and Ragnedda, 2017). Hence, creating a “virtual community”, based on common interests, views and perspectives, might generate “strong ties” incrementing what Putnam defines as “bonding social” capital aimed at fostering “civil engagement”. In turn, bonding social capital provides strong and emotionally close relationships among people of similar backgrounds (Williams, 2006). Weak ties: the Internet might be a supportive tool for people seeking a job by increasing the number of contacts of potential employers that an Internet user can easily find online. This opportunity offered by the Internet tool might contribute to reinforcing the “relational capital” of Internet users by generating “useful” relations. These resulting connections can be inscribed in what Putnam calls bridging social capital, which contributes to access to both information and opportunities. This is also what Granovetter (1983) calls the “strength of weak ties”. At the same time, the communication via Internet (e.g. via email) in relation to the “weak ties” might increase the possibility that an employer will ignore one’s emails. Moreover, even job interviews can be made through the Internet across the world. However, this does not necessarily mean that these meetings will be successful thanks to the Internet. In fact, there can be a number of negative aspects as well. Just to give some example, during a Skype interview a number of problems can arise, such as: connections problems and consequent misunderstanding (exacerbated if the language of employers and employees is not the same); missing of information given by proxemics (e.g. position of the body in the space and management of interpersonal spaces). Therefore, one side of the coin shows increased possibilities to meet new employers; the other side shows how the resulting weak ties (and the use of the Internet for communicating) can negatively affect the success of the process. Enlargement of social networks: as already underlined, the Internet can generate platforms of sharing. With regards to social media, and in particular to Facebook, this represents a platform in which people are mainly connected with their existing offline contacts (see Johnston et al., 2013). Hence, they become Facebook users bringing with them an initial existing social capital. In this sense, Facebook can be seen as a tool that increases bonding social capital by reinforcing relationships between people who already know each other. At the same time, new friendships can be generated thanks to a “snowball effect” through which a user starts new friendships with friends of friends, or new friendships can be generated from becoming a member of “groups of interest”. Hence, Facebook might also generate a sort of bridging social capital by connecting new people (even though friends of friends tend to share the same background). In fact, an increasing number of people are founding groups based on cooperation for achieving common missions/ goals (regarding diverse issues, from politics to societal and cultural challenges, pets, entertainment, etc.). On the one hand, if close groups (characterised by high bonding social capital) are generated, they can become exclusive (Portes, 1998), excluding people of different backgrounds and not increasing the initial stock of

28  Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu social capital of members. On the other hand, when groups are too heterogeneous, Facebook can also become a theatre of conflicts between persons/groups that do not share the same opinions. Increase of visibility: the Internet, and in particular social media, are becoming platforms for increasing people’s visibility. This is the reason why there has been a proliferation of degree and post-degree programmes that focus on Internet tools management, in particular with regards to social media. This is also the reason why politicians are increasingly using the Internet (together with traditional media campaigns) to gain visibility and success. In this context, the Internet demonstrates its potential in enlarging social networks by generating trust and producing civic engagement. This is the case of the “President online”; Barack Obama in the USA in 2008 (Sullivan, 2008) or President Matteo Renzi in Italy in 2014. They used social media (together with massive television and face-to-face campaigns) for gaining consensus seeking to instil the idea of a revived e-democracy, and so far they continue to use the Internet for constantly interacting with people. Furthermore, it seems that Twitter played a key role in Donald Trump’s election (2016). Indeed, according to Debra Lee (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BET, the parent company for Black Entertainment Television), Trump was a master at using Twitter and it “really did seem to have helped him win the election” (Warzel, 2016). However, the use of Internet tools is not a guarantee of success. In the case of the 2004 election in the USA and in the 2014 election in Italy, respectively Howard Dean and the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S, founded by Beppe Grillo) gained a wide consensus thanks to the Internet, but they did not win elections (see Kreiss, 2012; Bentivegna, 2013; Cornfield, 2005). At the same time, better than Obama and Renzi, they are a testimony to the power of the Internet to reach people outside the mainstream media (television and newspapers). Beppe Grillo and the M5S have progressively increased their social capital by activating mixed processes of direct, participatory and deliberative e-democracy (Floridia and Vignati, 2013). In doing this, the Internet has played a significant role in engaging people, building trust within the movement and generating a “community” characterised by bonding social capital. At the same time, Grillo was a successful political satire who had already built his extensive social networks before founding the movement. Specifically, his ability was to transform his bringing social capital (deriving from his previous activity) into bonding social capital (around politics), thanks to ICTs. Knowledge, trust and freedom: Internet users need to trust the Internet (“cybertrust”) as a key factor to the ICTs’ success (Dutton and Shepherd, 2003, 2006; Urban and Lorenzon, 2009). As underlined by Dutton and Shepherd (2003), Internet users develop confidence in the technology, and in the people they can communicate with on the Internet. They are also likely to believe that information on the Internet is reliable. Taking the case of shopping online, buyers have to trust not only sellers, but they need to have confidence in the net in which they put their credit card data. However, besides risks, a number of benefits in shopping online can be identified, such as, for example, savings, choosing among a huge variety of products and reducing waste of time to reaching and visiting shops.

Social capital and the levels of digital divide 29 At the same time, experienced online buyers also enlarge their social capital by establishing economic relationships with sellers, respecting norms and increasing their “cybertrust”. However, the users’ trust in ICTs and their freedom in expressing and virtual acting might be undermined by an invisible hand, which might drive users’ choices. The amount of users’ personal information contained in the Google database (as well as in social media databases) and gained from email, searching activity, chats, calendars, photos, videos, blogs, documents, social networks and credit cards, give to the company a huge economic power. The search engines aggregate current and past searches and use this information to profile and target people with effective advertising (Tene, 2008). This means that when users navigate online, they receive a huge amount of suggestions from search engines and social media, which try to orient their choices. Advertising supports users in choosing material (e.g. movies, products) and immaterial goods (knowledge, news, information). Hence, in relation to past users’ searches, existing virtual social networks and personal interests, the Internet outlines users’ profiles in order to help them to satisfy their needs while trying to direct them towards its preferences. As a consequence, those who have higher digital capital (in terms of ICTs’ skills and knowledge about ICTs’ privacy-related issues) are more likely to defend their privacy and freedom on the Internet, hence they have also the capability to increase their social capital (in terms of increased net-confidence, possibilities to gather knowledge less influenced by the search engines, possibilities to enlarge their social networks). In turn, digital skills are also dependent on social and cultural capitals, reflecting the traditional social inequalities (van Deursen and van Dijk, 2015). By contrast, those who have an initial limited digital capital (but also cultural and social) are more likely to be “victims” of the search engines’ advertisements, limiting their possibilities to explore new horizons. To sum up in salient points, from the analysis proposed it emerges that digital and social capital are connected at different levels: the creation of virtual communities seems to rely upon users’ ability to translate their existing social capital into a virtual capital, which in turn reinforces strong ties and an “ingroup” sense of belonging. The Internet may become a trust-based platform for sharing interests, informing people, disseminating information and increasing citizens’ engagement, but it is mainly used for bringing together people who share common goals. In this sense, all the “classic” definitions of social capital considered seem to be satisfied by this tendency. At the same time, the risk that weak ties might not produce the expected benefits may indicate that the digital capital tends to reflect the same inequalities raised by the Bourdieusian social capital (by reflecting the offline social structure). Moreover, the potential links between increase in visibility online and “power” offline are further evidence of how the virtual dimension reflects existing social structures. Finally, one of the more evident points of contact between social and digital capital might be identified in the trust-generating mechanisms. In fact, it seems that “cybertrust” and confidence and trust in the Internet’s environment might be undermined by a lack of expertise, knowledge, and digital skills, thus affecting the number of

30  Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu potential benefits deriving from the Internet experience. From these reflections, there emerges a definition of digital capital as independent capital, but strongly interrelated with other forms of capital (and primarily with social capital). As a consequence, digital capital might be defined not only as a set of skills, infrastructures, competencies, experience, expertise and abilities, but also as interconnections, virtual social networks and trust, motivations which derive from and can be converted into other types of capitals (economic, social, political, personal and cultural).

Concluding remarks Although social capital has been defined in many different ways, once we apply social capital to the digital divide, it emerges that digital capital is an independent capital, but related to other forms of capital. More importantly, digital capital is an independent source of power affecting social and digital inequalities. Social capital influences “relational power”, which refers to those benefits deriving from the amount of “useful” relations (in terms of culture, economy or politics) possessed by an individual. This aspect sounds particularly pertinent if applied to the three-dimensional level of digital divide: access-use-benefits. Indeed, one of the missions of the Internet is to connect people, by creating new and reinforcing existing social networks. The Internet may also support users in increasing their social capital while gaining benefits in economic, personal and cultural terms. However, in order to do this, citizens are supposed to not only access the Internet, bridging the first level of digital divide, but to have particular skills (technical, social, critical, strategic and creative) and motivation in using the Internet. Indeed, it is this different qualitative experience of the use of the Internet (second level of digital divide) that produces different outcomes and social benefits (third level of digital divide). By analysing five macro-areas in which digital and social capitals are directly interconnected, benefits and opportunities are generated by the use of the Internet and by the capacity to reinvest into the offline network the valuable information acquired online. Indeed, when users approach the Internet they need to have already built a solid social capital in their offline life, together with proper cultural and economic background and personal motivations. In fact, as we have underlined several times throughout the chapter, social capital not only consists of social networks, but it also refers to abilities and opportunities to create social networks, thanks to trust-generating mechanisms, in a context defined by social norms. Likewise, in offline life, this scheme is also valid for Internet use, in which users are responsible for creating their own opportunities. As a consequence, those who access the Internet with a high endowment of social capital will be more likely to reproduce their capital online by applying mechanisms similar to those adopted offline. In turn, the social-digital capital generated online will support users’ offline activities. In this sense, the Internet seems to privilege the privileged, exactly as Bourdieu described the offline mechanisms of social capital production.

Social capital and the levels of digital divide 31 Future research should focus on measuring offline and online social capital, in order to empirically investigate Bourdieu’s position on the role of social capital as a means of maintaining superiority for privileged people. It might be useful to analyse how the reproduction of social capital in the online world helps those who are already enjoying a privileged position to further reinforce their privilege. At the same time, it might be useful to analyse, by contrast, how digital capital might help those who are socially disadvantaged to improve their opportunities. The challenge here is to operationalise the concept of digital capital and analyse it in relation to the third level of digital divide, namely the capacity to transform the online experience into social benefits.

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3 Do data analysts fill the role of the psychoanalyst? The contemporary digital divide and Freud’s theory Tomohisa Hirata Introduction How can we theorise the digital divide through the perspective of psychoanalysis? The reason why I pose this question is that it is easy to imagine there is a large gap between what is indicated by the term ‘digital divide’ and the aims of psychoanalysis. Therefore, the main purpose of this chapter is to fill this gap by theorising the digital divide based on Sigmund Freud’s theories. This said, how should we bridge this gap? To understand the difficulties in solving this problem, let us first consider the meaning of ‘cure’ in Freud’s theories as an introduction to this chapter, this being the ability for patients to be able to understand and satisfy their desires, whose causes are hidden from themselves, through non-pathological means. If we can describe how people satisfy their desires by use of contemporary media technologies via comparing the situations of Freud’s patients and that of the contemporary digital divide, we will seemingly be able to theorise the digital divide through the context of psychoanalysis. However, taking this approach makes the above gap larger for the reason as follows: Freud did not provide many longer case histories within his body of work, and those that do exist were all written between 1895 and 1920 (Breuer and Freud, 1895; Freud, 1920). With this in mind, the circumstances of his patients are clearly very different from that of the contemporary digital divide. On the other hand, it is well known that Freud’s work includes anthropological writings based on his theories. In ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’, Freud expresses his basic ideas regarding the relationship between media technologies and the desires of human beings. For example, by admitting “we ought not to infer from it that technical progress is without value for the economics of our happiness”, Freud summons “the voice of pessimistic criticism” (Freud, 1929, p. 88) as follows: If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if travelling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. (Freud, 1929, p. 88)

36  Tomohisa Hirata This idea is to some degree true, and may well be applicable to our contemporary situation, especially when considering the problem of so-called ‘Social Networking Service Addiction’. However, we will have difficulty in theorising the digital divide based on this idea as it only tells us about a general relationship between media technologies and the desires of human beings. If we want to apply this relationship to the contemporary digital divide situation, we will have to trace the transition of the relationship Freud describes through the history of media technologies.

Methodology With the above problems in mind, I will focus on the ‘analysts’ in this chapter as the method for accomplishing our purpose. In fact, as the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud left many theses regarding techniques for analysing the clinical data offered by the patients. Additionally, Friedrich Kittler (1999) demonstrates that the implication of Freud’s writings on psychoanalytical techniques can be treated as the analysis of ordinary people who are in front of and use the media technologies. On the other hand, Freud writes these theses for their colleagues to tell the skills to decipher the desires of people including their patients. His theses are worthy of referring especially when we take notice of the emergence of the ‘new digital divide’ which danah boyd and Kate Crawford discuss. Their discussion on the new digital divide can be summarised as follows: In a big data-oriented society supported by contemporary media technologies, there are (1) big data donors who offer their personal data that more or less reflects on their desires and collectively forms big data, (2) big data holders who are able to acquire data from their managing companies or other similar organisations, and (3) big data analysts who have the skills and expertise to analyse the data. Whether or not people have the skills to analyse big data (or have the opportunity to develop these skills through education), there are criteria for classifying people as “big data rich” or “big data poor” (Boyd and Crawford, 2012, p. 675). We can understand that the divide between the big data rich and the big data poor means that between those who can decipher the desires of people and those who cannot. Hence, the relationship between the big data rich and the big data poor is similar to that between the psychoanalysts and their patients. Furthermore, we are also able to make a connection between the above confirmations and the previous studies on the theory of digital divide. For example, according to the discussions on the “first and second digital divides” (Attwell, 2001), the new digital divide can be clarified as follows. There is a possibility of the emergence of the divide in terms of physical access to big data between (1), (3) and (2), and that of the divide in terms of the skills to access big data between (1), (2) and (3). Therefore, when the big data analysts work with big data holders, we regard them as holding supreme power over big data donors and the collaborative power between data analysts and data holders has already been realised through

The contemporary digital divide 37 client-server database management systems (DBMS, singular) or cloud-based DBMSs with data mining software. Taking this into account, we have to include the architects of DBMSs within the riches of big data, or else, regard them as a quintessential example of the big data rich. Then, we can analyse the power of the architects of DBMSs over big data donors by referring to the power of psychoanalysts over their patients. Additionally, as will hereinafter be described in detail, by focusing on the skills to analyse big data, which can be regarded as the resource of value, we also are able to analyse the contemporary digital divide from the viewpoint of Freud’s theory in collaboration with some previous studies discussing on the relationship between the digital skills and the social inequality. From the above confirmation on the methodology of this chapter to accomplish our purpose, we will try to compare the commonalities and differences between psychoanalysts and big data analysts regarding their attitudes towards data (see section called “Attitudes towards data”), their presuppositions regarding data analysis (see sections called “Two presuppositions of big data analysis”, “Patients’ resistance and their mental illness” and “Two presuppositions of psychoanalysis and the difference between the two analyses”) and their methods of satisfying the desires of data donors (see sections called “Two presuppositions of psychoanalysis and the difference between the two analyses” and “The problems of the end of psychoanalysis”). The title of this chapter is derived from this approach with the aim filling the gaps between these two types of ‘analyst’. As a summary of this section, let us illustrate the final goal of this chapter as the following matrix. This matrix reflects on the fact that Freud’s psychoanalytical techniques are not only for deciphering the desires of people but also for curing his patients, that is, for satisfying their desires, whose causes are hidden from themselves, through non-pathological means. We clarify that in Freudian theory, a precise meaning of `cure’ is a situation in which the patient finds relief from their hidden desires, as facilitated by the psychoanalyst’s analysis of the patient’s personal experiences

Figure 3.1 The matrix of the contemporary digital divide from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis.

38  Tomohisa Hirata in light of the analyst’s clinical experience. This can be paraphrased that they are free from (the result of) the (data) analysis or have the control over the distance from their desires. In addition, we will pay attention to what Freud explains psychanalysts also should have the control over: (the result of) their analysis (see section called “The problems of the end of psychoanalysis”). From this point of view, the controllability or freedom from (the result of) the data analysis can be treated as another criterion of the digital divide. Our final goal is to build it into the previous studies on the digital divide and social inequality (see section called “The problems of the end of psychoanalysis”).

Attitudes towards data To understand the big data analyst’s attitude towards the data, let us first consider the simple question: What is big data? According to the McKinsey Global Institute’s report on big data (Manyika et al., 2011), whether a dataset is considered big or not differs dependent on each analysts’ definition of big data, as well as the environment of their analysis. It is true that big data is ‘big’ in some way, but there are no objective criteria for classifying the size of a dataset. It is often stated that the factors that define the size of a big dataset are the 3Vs: Volume, Variety and Velocity. However, there is no precise answer regarding how much of each of these factors is enough for a dataset to be regarded as big data. Furthermore, big data itself has little or no value, becoming relevant only after an analyst analyses it as big data. This can be easily imagined if we consider an analysis of Twitter, whose dataset comprises a vast amount of daily ‘tweets’. Therefore, there is a big difference between the value of holding big data and that of analysing it. This tells us that the new digital divide emerges in principle whether people have the skills to analyse big data or not. On the other hand, the common idea underlying all of Freud’s theses on psychoanalytical techniques, including the interpretation of dreams (Freud, 1900) and parapraxes (Freud, 1901) and the practice of ‘free association’, is that their purpose is to reveal the unconscious causes of mental illnesses. Leaving aside questions relating to why the causes of mental illnesses become conscious through the use of Freud’s techniques, and why they are hidden from patients’ minds in the first place, let us focus on what is relevant to our investigation: that being Freud’s view of dreams themselves as “ordinary phenomena, with little value set on them, and apparently of no practical use—like parapraxes” (Freud, 1915–1916, pp. 83–4). From the same perspective, he explains free association as follows: I now asked him [a patient] to abandon himself to a process of free association—that is, to say whatever came into his head, while ceasing to give any conscious direction to his thoughts. It was essential, however, that he should blind himself to literally everything that occurred to his self-perception and not give way to critical objections which sought to put certain associations on

The contemporary digital divide 39 one side on the ground that they were not sufficiently important or that they were irrelevant or that they were altogether meaningless. (Freud, 1925, p. 40) In addition, Freud also notes that the significance of dreams and parapraxes clarified through the perspective of psychoanalysis is highlighted by criticising the sciences of that time which neglected to clarify them (Freud, 1915–1916, p. 84). Thus, we can note that a common attitude shared by both the psychoanalyst and the big data analyst is the regarding of data itself as having little or no value, with its value found through analysis. In the following sections, we will compare the presuppositions of analysis from the perspectives of both the big data analyst and the psychoanalyst.

Two presuppositions of big data analysis In the second section of this chapter, we slightly touched upon ‘data mining’ as a method for analysing big data. The report of the McKinsey Global Institute defines data mining as the following: A set of techniques to extract patterns from large datasets by combining methods from statistics and machine learning with database management. These techniques include association rule learning, cluster analysis, classification, and regression. (Manyika et al., 2011, p. 28) So why are these techniques worth mentioning? The reason I ask this question is that finding associational rules or regression equations and making clusters or classifications are fundamental techniques used in existing statistical analysis. For example, exploratory data analysis (EDA), which is often considered “the first step” (O’Neil and Schutt, 2013, p. 34) of big data analysis, was originally put forward by John W. Turkey as a means of visualising the shape of a dataset through stem-and-leaf and box-and-whisker plots, in order to get a “feel what the data are like” (Turkey, 1977, p. 19). One of the most important reasons to consider existing statistical techniques is that big data is “messy” (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013). The precise meaning of messiness regarding big data is that data within the set are sparse. In other words, the dataset has lots of missing values and therefore has a low density value, which inextricably links to its 3V (or 4V) factors. As such, the fundamental statistical techniques discussed are regarded as having intrinsic worth within big data analysis due to big data being too messy (relating to the data volume, variety and velocity) to understand without them. However, we have little chance of finding this kind of messiness within a given dataset using existing statistical methods, as we have to select samples at random from a population, and the samples must be as clean as possible. Moreover, the method of random sampling has been a fundamental principle for providing a

40  Tomohisa Hirata level of objectivity within statistics and the (social) sciences. In this sense, the concept of objectivity within big data analysis differs from the concept of objectivity within the traditional sciences. Let us consider the concepts of random sampling, population and scientific objectivity in the context of big data analysis. It is sometimes believed that big data is itself a population, or is similar to it; however, this is not correct. For example, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier write “N = all” in their book (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013) many times but most of them are in the chapter titled ‘More’. In fact, in their conclusion, they argue that “the totality of information in the world – the ultimate N = all – can never be gathered, stored, or processed by our technologies” (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013, p. 197). Big data sets are neither a set of samples chosen at random from a population nor a population itself. As Cathy O’Neal and Rachel Schutt explain, big data analysts regard big datasets as “only one single realization from some larger superpopulation” (O’Neal and Schutt, 2013, p. 22) due to the random sampling from a super-population. Taking into account the fact that various kinds of data continue to rapidly increase in number, this assumption, in terms of a population, seems to be reasonable. However, relevant to our discussion is the notion that big data analysts assume a super-population by analysing a given dataset and building a model through which they can infer the parameters of a super-population. This is because a given dataset can be identified as a single realization only after they have built a model demonstrating the relationships between the features of a given dataset and the parameters of the population, through the use of EDA, data mining, and so on. If big data is messy, they have no choice but to fit a model in order to understand the features of a given dataset. Therefore, these models are inevitably based on the big data analysts’ more or less subjective interests. Thus, the objectivity of big data analysis depends on the possibility of updating models to maximise their likelihood and reflect other data or outliers that endlessly increase in number. In this sense, big data analysis has a high compatibility with Bayesian statistics. From a viewpoint of these statistics, the parameters are regarded as random variables and their likelihood are maximised by use of the Bayesian inference that updates the models according to Bayes’ rule.1 Taking into account the above discussion, we can summarise big data analysts’ presuppositions as follows: (1) a presupposition of assuming a super-population only after building a statistical model, and (2) a presupposition of objectivity dependent on the possibility of updating the statistical models.

Patients’ resistance and their mental illness If the presuppositions of big data analysis can be described as above, how can we describe the presuppositions of psychoanalysis? In preparation to answer this question, let us consider Freud’s short article (1912) in which he explains the basic method of psychoanalytical treatment. At

The contemporary digital divide 41 the beginning of the article, Freud discusses his view on “the task of keeping in mind all the innumerable names, dates, detailed memories and pathological products” (Freud, 1912, p. 111) that each patient offers in accordance with the “fundamental rule of psychoanalysis” (Freud, 1912, p. 112); that is to say, with free association. “The technique, however, is a very simple one”, he explains: it rejects the use of any special expedient (even that of taking notes). It consists simply in not directing one’s notice to anything in particular and in maintaining the same ‘evenly-suspended attention’… in the face of all that one hears. (Freud, 1912, pp. 111–2) The evenly suspended attention allows psychoanalysts to receive all of the data offered by the patients’ free association for what they are. In addition, taking into account the fact that Freud focused on parapraxes, we have to consider that the evenly suspended attention is applied to not only the free association of patients but also to all other forms of information that relate to patients’ behaviour, in other words, all data collected from clinical experiences. In this sense, the data offered by patients is as messy as big data. This still leaves us with the question: how do psychoanalysts analyse their data? We can break this down into the following more precise questions we left in the third section of this chapter: Why do the causes of mental illnesses become conscious by use of free association or by interpreting dreams and parapraxes? Why are they hidden from a patient’s mind? During the process of psychoanalytical treatment, psychoanalysts uncover patients’ resistances. The basic meaning of the term ‘resistance’ in Freud’s theory is something that is “discovered as an obstacle to the elucidation of the symptoms and to the progress of the treatment” (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1974, p. 395). Resistance is closely linked to the psychoanalytical way of viewing the causes of mental illnesses. In Freud’s opinion, the causes of mental illnesses are the drives (and representatives of them) that have not been fully satisfied in the past and have been subsequently suppressed unconsciously as something unpleasant. These unsatisfied drives are suppressed rather than completely extinguished, and as such, they manifest either as unconscious desires within a (social) situation related to the situation that led to the drive’s lack of satisfaction in the first place, or in the physical state of patients when there is a lower intensity of suppression, such as during the hours of sleep. From a psychoanalytical viewpoint, mental illness can be understood as a phenomenon in which a patient’s drives are not sufficiently suppressed for some reason or other, leading them to have difficulties during ordinary social life due to their unconscious desires. In other words, being mentally healthy means that those drives are successfully suppressed at that time. In psychoanalytical treatment, the resistance which psychoanalysts find during the free association of their patient is viewed as punctuation in the flow of experience of the patient’s free association. Upon finding this kind of punctuation,

42  Tomohisa Hirata psychoanalysts encourage their patients to continue to free associate around the terms of the punctuation, but from another point of view. Through repeating this process, the existence of the related unconscious desires become visible to the patient. In this section, we confirmed the way of psychoanalytical treatment. By interpreting it as that of deciphering data that reflects on the desires of people, we will try to clarify the presuppositions of psychoanalysis and compare them with those of big data analysis in the following section.

Two presuppositions of psychoanalysis and the difference between the two analyses We will now attempt to ascertain the presuppositions of psychoanalysis through comparison with the presuppositions of big data analysis. First of all, the suppressed drives in psychoanalysis can be considered as equivalent to the parameters of a super-population in big data analysis for the following reasons: First, the dataset that psychoanalysts obtain from their patients that relates to their medical conditions, free associations, or the content of their dreams and so forth, is often messy in its content and can be regarded as a single realization of the unconscious patient and their resistances through the experience of psychoanalysis. For example, desires activated by suppressed drives. Second, Freud built some models that could be applied to everybody (not only his patients) in order to elucidate suppressed drives and explain the relationship between the resistances and these drives. For example, consider one of his most famous models, the ‘Oedipus complex’, defined as the Organised body of loving and hostile wishes which the child experiences towards its parents. In its so-called positive form, the complex appears as in the story of Oedipus Rex: a desire for the death of the rival—the parent of the same sex—and a sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex. In its negative form, we find the reverse picture: love for the parent of the same sex, and jealous hatred for the parent of the opposite sex. (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1974, pp. 282–3) In Freud’s view, a sexual desire for one’s parent is often interfered with by the external environment, particularly by the existence of another parent. As the result of this interference, a drive activating the sexual desire is unconsciously suppressed and becomes one of the main causes of the subsequent mental illnesses. In this sense, the Oedipus complex is a tentative model for the explanation of the relationship between the resistances and the suppressed drives. By interpreting the Oedipus complex as a tentative model, we realise the full potential of Freud’s theory, although it has been criticised as not having scientific objectivity by (social) science. However, this interpretation is not without foundation. In fact, the above definition is the so-called final version of the Oedipus complex. According to Peter Gay (2006, p. 113), “Freud’s early formations of the

The contemporary digital divide 43 Oedipus complex were comparatively simple; he would considerably complicate them over the years”. Furthermore, it derived from Freud’s subjective memories; in other words, it was formed through his own self-analysis of memories relating to his relationship with his parents. Therefore, in common with big data analysis, the objectivity of psychoanalysis depends on the possibility of updating the theoretical model. Freud renewed not only the Oedipus complex (Gay, 2006, p. 90) but also psychical apparatus such as the triad model of conscious/preconscious/unconscious and his model of the id/ego/superego. According to Jacques Lacan (1978, p. 161), Freud updated his model of the psychical apparatus at least four times, with the third and fourth updates informed by new clinical data that suggested the existence of other types of drives such as the death drive. On the other hand, one obvious difference between psychoanalysis and big data analysis is whether there is the idea of the resistance or not. This difference is very important because it leads the difference of the way of satisfying the desires. In order to clarify its importance, let us reconsider resistance in terms of the peculiar characteristics of psychoanalytical treatment. As discussed above, Freud placed the concept of resistance at the centre of his theoretical models, with resistance found to be an obstacle to the progress of the psychoanalytical treatment. If a psychoanalyst fails to find resistances during psychoanalysis, then the treatment makes no progress at all. In this sense, successful psychoanalytical treatment, or in other words successful deciphering of data in psychoanalysis, can be viewed as the repetition of finding obstacles within the analysis, until it reaches its conclusion. Regarding this, if a psychoanalyst tries to lead the unconscious desires of their patient to a place of (complete) satisfaction, there is a significant possibility that the patient will experience unpleasant feelings related to the reason why a drive was suppressed in the first place. In fact, according to Freud’s theory, the psychoanalyst often finds the resistance of patients, called ‘(secondary) gain from illness’, continuing to remain as part of their mental illness despite having enough information to be aware of the unconscious desires. Therefore, we need further consideration for the satisfaction of the desires as the cure in psychoanalysis by asking the following questions: When does psychoanalytical treatment terminate? What does the termination of treatment mean? By answering these questions, we will be able to precisely ascertain the role of resistance in psychoanalysis, and illustrate potential problems that may occur when big data analysts fail to include the concept of resistance into their models.

The problems of the end of psychoanalysis Freud writes that “the ambiguous phrase ‘the end of an analysis’” (Freud, 1937, p. 219) can be interpreted two ways: (1) as resolving the patients’ mental illness and its effects (Freud, 1937, p. 219), and (2) as preventing patients from falling into mental illness again (Freud, 1937, pp. 219–20). It is apparent that the realisation of (2) needs to be perpetuated by (1), with Freud arguing that psychoanalysts can realise (1), but not (2), from empirical and theoretical viewpoints (Freud, 1937).

44  Tomohisa Hirata With the above in mind, let us consider how Freud explains the two conditions for achieving (1) as follows: first, that the patient shall no longer be suffering from his symptoms and shall have overcome his anxieties and his inhibitions; and secondly, that the analyst shall judge that repressed material has been made conscious, so much that was unintelligible has been explained, and so much internal resistance conquered, that there is no need to fear a repetition of the pathological processes concerned. (Freud, 1937, p. 219) His explanation demonstrates that the presence or absence of a patient’s resistance is the only criterion for judging whether the psychoanalytical treatment is incomplete or not, due to the validity of judgements regarding whether repressed material has been explained, or whether unintelligible things have been made conscious, depending on the psychoanalyst not finding the patient’s associated resistances. Additionally, Freud also writes that “the work of analysis proceeds best if the patient’s pathologic experiences belong to the past, so that his ego can stand at a distance from them” (Freud, 1937, p. 232). In other words, the psychoanalytical treatment terminates when the psychoanalyst judges that the patient’s resistances have been conquered, then the patient is able to give distance to their pathological experiences (derived from a suppressed drive) by maintaining the experiences in their memory, rather than eliminating them from their mind. In this sense, resistance can be regarded as a reaction against the lack of control over the distance between the suppressed drives and their effects. Therefore, Freud strongly disapproves of the realisation of 2), which invokes the unnecessary resistances (Freud, 1937, pp. 231–2); as the saying goes, “let sleeping dog lie”. On the other hand, Freud reinterprets the problem of psychoanalytical treatment termination as a problem of how psychoanalysts lead their analysis to success. He explains that the “success depends very largely on the analyst’s having learnt sufficiently from his own ‘errors and mistakes’ and having got the better of ‘the weak points in his own personality’” (Freud, 1937, p. 247). Further stating that each psychoanalysts’ personality must be reckoned with “the factors which influence the prospects of analytic treatment and add to its difficulties in the same manner as the resistances” (Freud, 1937, p. 247). In order to solve this problem, Freud recommends that psychoanalysts conduct self-analysis from “with which his preparation for his future activity begins” (Freud, 1937, p. 248). As we saw in the “two presuppositions of psychoanalysis and the difference between the two analyses”, Freud’s own self-analysis was the first step of psychoanalysis in terms of discovering the Oedipus complex within his memory. However, in a successful self-analysis, the psychoanalyst finds that “the stimuli that he has received in his own analysis not ceasing when it ends and the process of ­remodelling the ego continuing spontaneously in the analysed subject and making use of all subsequent experiences in this newly-acquired sense” (Freud, 1937, p. 249).

The contemporary digital divide 45 Thus, the self-analysis encourages psychoanalysts to reflect on how their unconscious desires and suppressed drives have influenced their personality, or their method of analysis, and how they make use of their past experiences within their future analyses. With this in mind, a large part of this reflection on their experiences consists of the patient’s resistances.

Conclusions and future directions Taking into account the above discussions, it is possible to suggest some possible problems in big data analysis in accordance with Freud’s theory and describe them as the contemporary digital divide. One of the most serious problems is a possibility of destroying the ordinary social lives of big data donors. That is to say that if big data analysts do not include the idea of resistance within their models, they cannot avoid the possibility that they will be continuously satisfying the unconscious desires of the big data donors through something offered as the result of their analysis. Additionally, there is also a possibility that big data donors satisfy their desires at a lower level with what is supplied through big data analysis. Because if big data analysts do not instill the idea of resistance into their models, what they have to pursue is to maximise the likelihood of their models, and then they need not to ask the reason why big data donors are satisfied with (the results of) their analysis. We can conceptualise these potential problems as relating to people’s freedom from the analysis and its results, with the solution being to have control over the distance from the analysis and its results. From this point of view, we should divide the big data donors into two categories. On the other hand, according to Freud’s theory, we have to reinterpret the above problems as those of how big data analysts reflect on their analysis. In other words, if big data analysts do not add the idea of the resistance into their models, they cannot escape a possibility that they are ignoring the problems from which big data donors suffer and the need to re-examine their way of analysis and the results of their analyses. Then, big data analysts, to use Freud’s phrase, become people whom “themselves remain as they are and are able to withdraw from the critical and corrective influence of analysis” (Freud, 1937, p. 249). In this sense, we must divide the big data analysts into two categories from the viewpoint of whether they are free from (the results of) the analysis. These findings can be summarised as the matrix posed in the end of the Methodology. It shows that if we try to consider the contemporary digital divide, we have to focus on not only whether people have the skills to analyse big data but also whether they have a level of control regarding the distance from (the results of) the data analysis. To say broader perspective, the installation of the criterion in terms of the controllability into the previous theory of the digital divide seems to be a reasonable extension of them. In fact, some studies on the theorisation or conceptualisation of the digital divide mainly focus on the relationship between the unequal

46  Tomohisa Hirata distribution of the digital skills and the social inequality (DiMaggio et al., 2004; van Dijk, 2013). They also try to elucidate social, cultural and economic factors prompting the digital divide situation and social inequality. However, it is hard to say that they have sufficiently paid attention to the possibility that the digital skill holders are alienated from themselves (self-alienation) by use of their skills and that there are digitally less-skilled people who have control over the distance from the data analysis and its results while these people are rare cases. In this sense, the controllability we introduced by referring to Freud’s theory, which means the level of the control over the distance from the data analysis and its result, can be regarded as a criterion of the digital divide in terms of the dependence on the digital skills. For example, by referring to this criterion, we can understand the digital divide between those who are deeply dependent on their digital skills to keep their lives or have their self-identities and those who are not. On the other hand, we can easily imagine that the controllability of each person differs according to his/her social circumstances or his/her desires. Therefore, we need further investigation for specifying social, cultural and economic factors that accelerate the dependence on the digital skills and considering the relationship between these factors and the power in collaboration with some previous studies. So our future tasks will be 1) to ascertain the relationships among the four categories of the matrix and social, cultural and economic factors that make a contribution in shaping those categories, and 2) to reconsider concepts which may play a role in the resistance within big data analysis, such as ‘avoiding overfitting’, and to infer their technical, sociological and ethical implications.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows Number 13J07647.

Note 1 For details of Bayesian statistics, see Gelman, Carlin, Stern, Dunson, Vehtari and Rubin (2013). In addition, Sander Greenland clearly discusses the meaning of the objectivity in Bayesian inference within the context of the scientific induction and deduction (Greenland, 1998).

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The contemporary digital divide 47 Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. IV-V. London: Vintage. Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. VI. London: Vintage. Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XII. London: Vintage, 111–20. Freud, S. (1915–1916). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XV-XVI. London: Vintage. Freud, S. (1920). The psychogenesis of a case of homosexuality in a woman, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XVIII. London: Vintage, 147–72. Freud, S. (1925). An autobiographical study, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XX. London: Vintage, 7–74. Freud, S. (1929). Civilization and its discontents, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XXI. London: Vintage, 64–145. Freud, S. (1937). Analysis terminable and interminable, in J. Strachey (tr. and ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XVIII. London: Vintage, 216–53. Gay, P. (2006). Freud: A life for our time with a new foreword. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. Gelman, A., Carlin, J. B., Stern, H. S., Dunson, D. B., Vehtari, A., and Rubin, D. B. (2013). Bayesian data analysis (3rd ed.). Florida: CRC Press. Greenland, S. (1998). Induction versus Popper: substance versus semantics, International Journal of Epidemiology, 27, 543–8. Kittler, F. (1999). Gramophone, film, typewriter, G. Winthrop-Young and M. Wutz (tr.). CA: Stanford University Press. Lacan, J. (1978). Le séminaire, livre II: le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychalyse. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Laplanche, J., and Pontalis, J.-B. (1974). The language of psycho-analysis, D. NicholsonSmith (tr.). New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. Manyika, J., Chui, M., Brown, B., Bughin, J., Roxburgh, C., and Byers, A. H. (2011). Big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. Mayer-Schönberger, V., and Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: a revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. London: John Murray. O’Neil, C., and Schutt, R. (2013). Doing data science: straight talk from the frontline, CA: O’Reilly Media. Turkey, J. W. (1977). Exploratory data analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. van Dijk, J. (2013). A theory of the digital divide, in M. Ragnedda and G. W. Muschert (eds), The digital divide: the internet and social inequality in international perspective. London: Routledge, 29–51.

4 The interpretive and ideal-type approach Rethinking digital non-use(s) in a Weberian perspective Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead Dividers in digital divide studies? We wish to understand on the one hand the relationships and the cultural ­significance of individual events in their contemporary manifestations and on the other the cause of their being historically so and not otherwise. Weber, 1949 [1904], p. 72

The literature on digital divides has shifted from a technical focus on technology access in the early 1990s to include different levels of literacy and skills (Blank & Groselj, 2015; Castells, 2001; Hargittai, 2007). These different skills comprise the ability to effectively use digital technologies, reap benefits, and avoid potential risks. Access, use, and impact of digital technologies are deeply intertwined with social dimensions, such as social class, status, education, gender, and age roles (Halford & Savage, 2010; Neves, 2015; Ragnedda & Muschert, 2013, 2015; Robinson et al., 2015; Warschauer, 2004). Despite this “recurring cycle between social and digital inequalities” (Ragnedda & Muschert, 2015, p. 2759), the jury is still out on which inequalities will be augmented by digital technologies, which new ones will emerge, and if any will be alleviated (Robinson et al., 2015). Although the digital divides field has been exploring these various social dynamics, theoretical approaches to frame them are still lacking in the literature (Ragnedda & Muschert, 2015). In particular, despite some notable efforts (Baumer et al., 2013; Portwood-Stacer, 2012; Wyatt et al., 2002; Wyatt, 2003, 2014), research still tends to conceptualize users and non-users as a binary and depict non-users as a homogeneous group. For instance, non-Internet users are often described as involuntarily excluded (e.g., older adults, unskilled, or marginalized communities). However, there is also voluntary exclusion amongst social groups associated with Internet use, such as young people (Eynon & Geniets, 2012; Neves et al., 2015). To help researchers critically explore non-use and its different meanings and effects, we propose drawing on seminal sociologist Max Weber, namely his interpretive perspective and his concept of the ideal type. A small body of literature has employed Weber’s concepts in the digital divides field, mostly on social stratification (Blagoev, 2015; Blank & Groselj, 2015; Ragnedda & Muschert, 2013, 2015; Schroeder, 2015; Wessels, 2015; Witte

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 49 & Mannon, 2010). However, Weber’s interpretive sociology is largely underexplored in this field and can be invaluable in the study of digital technologies. First, it connects micro, meso, and macro dimensions by bringing together meanings attributed to technology use and non-use with actions, structures, and resulting social changes or continuities. For example, by understanding how users see and place themselves as digital agents and how non-users make sense of users and usage, we can uncover types of use and non-use, barriers to technology use and appropriation, social identities, status, practices, structured and unstructured contexts, and a better understanding of the societal impact of technology in the daily lives of different users and non-users. Second, it sheds light on the complex relation between the role of new technology in everyday life and its wider social implications. For instance, the pervasiveness of digital technologies in industrialized societies enhances the sociotechnical functions of these technologies as frequent mediators of social dynamics, enabling or constraining actions and interactions. Additionally, routinization and ritualization of technology, as increasingly embedded in our professional and personal lives, justifies a growing rationalization, instrumentality, and marketization of automation and mechanization (Schroeder & Ling, 2013). Thus, Weber provides a multi-level approach to study digital technologies by including meanings, actions, and outcomes. Furthermore, the Weberian ideal type connects subjective understanding and structure—a useful strategy for analyzing any sociotechnical reality (Hekman, 1983; Rosenberg, 2016). To date and to our knowledge, the ideal type is absent in the analysis of digital technologies. Therefore, our contribution is twofold: (1) to present and contextualize the Weberian interpretive lens and the ideal type approach, showing their value for studying digital divides; and (2) to sketch how this approach can help uncover and frame non-use. For the latter, we bring together research with different types of non-users: older adults that do not adopt the Internet and young adults that reject social networking sites.

Weber’s interpretive framework and the ideal type Weberian sociology aims to understand the meaning that people attribute to actions, values, and circumstances, in order to explain social behaviors and outcomes (Weber, 1981 [1913]). This perspective offers an important framework to study digital divides, because it integrates and contextualizes the meanings that people ascribe to use or non-use of technology and its outcomes in our measurement and interpretation of digital inequalities—it positions social agents at the forefront of our understandings of sociotechnical systems and its societal impacts. It allows us to explore identities, performances, embedded social distinctions, and inequalities. We know, for example, that social class and status affect technology choices and values around use (Ames et al., 2011). To study meanings and actions of social agents, Weber (1981 [1913]) follows a hermeneutic approach that rejects both methodological unity and the opposition between interpretation (“Verstehen”) and explanation (“Erklären”). Unlike the German tradition that introduced Verstehen as a romantic reaction to Enlightenment rationalism

50  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead (Eliaeson, 2000), Weber’s interpretive perspective followed a rational and scientific approach (Weber, 1981 [1913]). His approach should be taken as “the ability to get not inside the skin of other people, but rather [understand] the concepts they use to organize their experience of the world” (David, 2010, p. xxiii). Additionally, Weber did not focus on the meaning of experiences per se (i.e., phenomenology); he was rather interested in when and how ideas affect both people’s lives and wider social interactions (Rosenberg, 2016). Adapted to digital divide studies, his interpretive sociology helps reveal the connection between patterns of intended meaning and broader social relationships. The general meaning a given action typically has for members of a specific stratum or class, such as daily use of social networking sites for highly educated Internet users, influences the ability to manage audiences and resources—for instance, by selecting a social networking site for interaction with close friends, such as Facebook, and another for professional dynamics, such as LinkedIn. These are captured empirically in social actions (Rosenberg, 2013) and illustrate how skills and technologies can shape social relations and be used to accrue resources. Those with knowledge and capital are able to more efficiently gather and accumulate resources (Halford & Savage, 2010). Although Weber deployed causal as well as interpretive explanations in his comprehensive sociological analysis of society, “interpretive sociology” was later taken to be opposed to causal and macro explanations. This is perhaps the result of having his work translated and read in light of theoretical preoccupations of different theorists, from Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schütz to Frankfurt School thinkers (David, 2010). Yet Weber tried to reconcile approaches and disputes, particularly during the German quarrel over methods (“Methodenstreit”) that opposed positivist causal analysis and the hermeneutics of understanding (Aron, 1961). It was in this context that Weber’s ideal type emerged, based on ideas of economic theory adapted to historical phenomena (Swedberg & Agevall, 2005). In his 1904/1949 (p. 90) essay on the “Objectivity of Social Science and Social Policy,” Weber explains: An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Gedankenbild). In its conceptual purity, this mental construct (Gedankenbild) cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia. Historical research faces the task of determining in each individual case, the extent to which this ideal-construct approximates to or diverges from reality to what extent for example, the economic structure of a certain city is to be classified as a “city-economy”. (Weber’s emphasis) By accentuation, Weber intends the process of identifying and heightening the meaningful elements that differentiate phenomena; by synthesis, he means the

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 51 formation of a mental idea into an integrated and logical construct, such as “rational capitalism” (Rosenberg, 2016). To exemplify his ideal type, Weber (1949 [1904], pp. 90–1) invokes “handicraft.” He writes, one can “work the ‘idea’ of ‘handicraft’ into a utopia by arranging certain traits, actually found in an unclear, confused state in the… enterprises of the most diverse epochs and countries, into a consistent ideal-construct by an accentuation of their basic tendencies.” This ideal type can then be used to compare or outline principles of different branches of economic and intellectual activity of a given company. Or it can be used as the antithesis of another ideal type that sets out the features of modern industry. Thus, ideal types are reference points and artificial constructions built on the isolation of typical traits. They are not hypotheses, but help with their development; they are not descriptions of reality but give clear expression to those descriptions (Weber, 1949 [1904]). Finally, they are a “utopia” because we cannot find them perfectly in any empirical reality. Ideal types are deliberately highlighted to help portray reality, by making its central elements visible and intelligible (Eliaeson, 2000). As we cannot grasp any social reality in its entirety, we can use ideal types to understand it more fully. Since the social sciences are concerned with the meaning of reality, this meaning can be explored with the relationship between empirical data and ideal types (Weber, 1949 [1904]). So, the ideal type is a conceptual tool to compare and measure reality (a means to knowledge rather than an end), allowing researchers to analyze differences and similarities between constructs and concrete cases and thus to illuminate meanings and relationships. The analysis of social reality must be done with several ideal types; however, ideal types are not statistical averages, perfect models, or axiological representations. The “ideal” refers to the logical sense of the term and not to a moral sense: “There are ideal types of brothels as well as of religions” (Weber, 1949 [1904], p. 130). For Weber, ideal types are developed in reference to research and have to be valuable and heuristic, even if just partially verifiable in different contexts (Weber, 1949 [1904])—because “they serve the purpose of making concrete cultural, or historical, situations accessible to human ‘understanding’” (Cahnman, 1965, p. 270). Furthermore, ideal types allow for building hypotheses connected with the conditions that led or contributed to a particular phenomenon or the consequences arising therefrom. For example, even when we cannot establish relationships between phenomena (“adequate causation”), Weber still encourages the use of ideal types: “to grasp the real causal interconnections, we construct unreal ones” (Weber, 2012 [1906], p. 182). This strategy is used by Weber (2012 [1906]) to discuss “objective possibility,” i.e., the importance of using historical knowledge and rational logic to think about different outcomes. To completely understand what happened in a certain social event or phenomenon, we also need to think about what could have happened (Aron, 1961). The ideal type is also utilized to resolve the tension between generalizing and individualizing. For example, when Weber tries to explain capitalism under the aegis of the general “economy” concept, it misses specific traits of capitalism; but, when a traditional conceptualization of capitalism is used, it leaves no room for comparisons with other related phenomena.

52  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead Unlike his interpretative sociology, Weber’s ideal type attracted criticism grounded on assumptions that ideal types were atheoretical, formulated arbitrarily, and classificatory rather than explicatory (Bruun & Whimster, 2012; Rosenberg, 2016). Authors such as Talcott Parsons (1964) deployed the ideal type concept in relation to typologies of human behavior or the study of modern capitalism and bureaucracy. However, most modifications led to loss of flexibility, reification, images instead of ideal-types, and approaches that contradicted Weber’s efforts (Cahnman, 1965). The ideal types preceded Weber’s essays on interpretive sociology, but there is a close connection between his ideal types and his theory, visible in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (Weber, [2002 1904/1905]), developed around the same time as the ideal types (Rosenberg, 2016). It was in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” that Weber found phenomena that could not be captured through historical analysis (e.g., relationships between the ideal and material interests of different social layers), which led him to seek interpretive sociological types to address such phenomena (Rosenberg, 2016). Weber also states that theory “creates ideal types, and this contribution is, precisely in my eyes, the most indispensable” (Bruun & Whimster, 2012, p. xxv). He also conceptualized the ideal type as an essential part of his theoretical development, reinforcing that its use “seeks to establish how far certain theoretically presentable rational consequences have followed. And possibly, why they did not follow” (Weber, 2004c [1921], p. 216). Regarding criticism of the arbitrary nature of ideal types, we must differentiate between Weber’s various types (Aron, 1961; Kalberg, 1994; Kuckartz, 1991; Rogers, 1969; Rosenberg, 2016). For this chapter, it is useful to distinguish between his original historical types and his sociological types (Rosenberg, 2016). Although these are complementary, they differ in that sociological types are not only developed as a comparison to reality, but are also developed for explanatory and theoretical purposes. For Weber, the value of sociology was to bring a deeper theoretical and comparative perspective into historical analysis (Rosenberg, 2016). Weber states in “Basic Sociological Concepts” (2004a [1922], p. 333), when talking about social action and regularities, that sociology and history are different since: “sociology is concerned with typologies of such modes of action unlike history, which concerns itself with causal imputation in respect of important fateful singular events.” Specifically, social actions exhibit “actual regularities” insofar as the “intended meaning” is attributed similarly to repeated actions by one or several individuals. The meaning that the sociologist attributes to these regularities, typical across social agents, remains contingent on a research goal and theoretical approach. Finally, Weber’s work shows how ideal types are part of a theoretical scheme to explain—and not merely classify—social processes. For example, in the implications of the relationship between the Protestant “calling” and the rational “capitalist spirit” (the “elective affinity”) for the lifestyle of some Western middle-classes (Weber, 2002 [1904–1905]) or in his theory of types of “religious rejections of the world” to explain differences of rational capitalism in China and India (Weber, 2004b, 2004c [1921]; Rosenberg, 2016). Thus, for Weber, explanation was

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 53 embedded in classification and his sociological ideal types were not formulated erratically, but to provide clear concepts and link theory, methods, and empirical work in order to explain social phenomena (Rosenberg, 2013). Therefore, the ideal type strategy is useful to conceptualize digital divide(s) because it helps explain what motivates, shapes, and characterizes uses and nonuses (whether voluntary, involuntary, or mixed) without rigid classifications that (1) do not represent the complexity of social and digital contexts and (2) neglect the contextual understandings of different social agents. Additionally, Weber’s ideal type is both structural and agentic (Hekman, 1983), allowing us to frame meanings and actions as interconnected, and to establish a continuum between subjective understanding and social structure. This continuum is crucial for scholars studying the links between social and digital stratification, as both forms are based on structural and agentic dynamics alike. To demonstrate its value for digital divide studies, the next section presents an exercise to illustrate the application of Weber’s interpretive framework and ideal type.

Putting Weber to the test: Internet non-use, use, and the in-between To put Weber’s interpretive ideal types to the test, we draw on two studies: 1 2

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in later life (2008–2010); Non-use of social networking sites among young people (2013–2014).

The first study examined use and perceptions towards computers, the Internet, and mobile phones amongst a representative sample of 500 older adults (65+) living in Lisbon, Portugal (Neves & Amaro, 2012; Neves, Amaro, & Fonseca, 2013). It was based on a mixed-methods approach that included questionnaires (n=500, 60% F, Mage = 74.34, S.D. = 6.453) and semi-structured interviews (n=10, 5 F, age range: 68–88). Results showed that 77 percent of older adults used a mobile phone, although only 13 percent used a computer and 10 percent used the Internet (Neves, Amaro, & Fonseca, 2013). Age and education predicted mobile phone and computer usage, whereas only education predicted Internet usage. Additionally, findings demonstrated that main factors for non-use were functional (no access and digital illiteracy) and attitudinal (lack of interest), rather than physical (agerelated impairments). There were different levels of digital inclusion/exclusion, if we consider more than one technology and skill as well as a mix of voluntary and involuntary exclusion. Results also indicated mostly positive perceptions of these technologies amongst non-users, although the qualitative data showed nuanced visions of Internet and age-related norms (i.e., non-users felt that for their community they were too old for new technology) and broad Internet usage (online fraud, pornography, cheating, etc.). In particular, the qualitative interviews captured three profiles: users, nonusers, and the “faux users” (Neves & Amaro, 2012). During the interviews, two of the non-users explained that they had family living abroad and communicated

54  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead with them via Skype (a video and audio online communication app): Clara had a granddaughter in Milan and Ana had a daughter and newborn granddaughter in Paris (whom she had never seen in person at the time of the interview). They both used the Internet indirectly, taking advantage of the social affordances of the medium for social interaction; still, they considered themselves non-users since they required continuous help to set up the computer and Skype. For instance, Ana explains: In these moments, there is always someone with me at the computer, because I’m afraid of touching something and ruin it. I can’t read. But I can see them and talk to them. And they can see me and talk back to me… it’s amazing. We named these “faux-users,” i.e., “a person that considers himself or herself a non-user but intermittently uses a technology with assistance of others” (Neves & Amaro, 2012, para 63). The second study is based on semi-structured interviews with 30 Portuguese young people (aged 18–26, 14 F.) who did not use social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook or Instagram (Neves et al., 2015). We found three main factors for their rejection, namely perceived usefulness (not seeing these social media as useful for their daily lives), negative social practices on SNSs (practices that they perceived as negative, such as gossip, online grooming, social exposure, etc.) and identity and self-presentation (e.g., political, lifestyle, cultural). We found five resisters (never used) and 15 rejecters (drop-outs), but also other types of non-users. Although most saw themselves as “non-aligned” with SNSs, we then questioned their non-alliance when uncovering surrogate users (n=6) and potential converts (n=4). The surrogate users saw themselves as non-users but used other people’s accounts to access information on SNSs (mothers’ or friends’ accounts). In the words of one surrogate user: “This way I can protect my privacy, but at the same time I can access the good things Facebook can give.” The potential converts were considering or reconsidering using SNSs, and their narratives throughout the interviews resembled an internal conversation as in the following case: I have a negative attitude towards it… maybe cause of what I see in the media, rapes, encounters gone bad … I don’t like personal exposure either… and people finding my address. Maybe Facebook is not that dangerous? If I could control my privacy there, the… the settings? I don’t know. These categories were not exclusive: surrogate users and potential converts could also be resisters or rejecters. Reasons for non-use were similar across the four groups, although narratives of self-presentation and identity were not as visible amongst the resisters. All participants had personal digital technologies and were Internet users, so they did not lack access or skills to use social media nor were they asocial or socially isolated. Yet, as with the older adults, it was not easy to distinguish completely between voluntary and involuntary exclusion: some of

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 55 these young non-users combined self-presentation discourses with events that led to their rejection, such as romantic problems with partners due to context collapse on Facebook or even having to stop using SNSs because of formal career impositions (e.g., one participant joined the priesthood). Taken together, these results show that the divide between use and non-use is not clear-cut and that non-use is not static. Despite homogeneous notions of the divide between “users” and “non-users,” we find a variety of non-users amongst different age groups and contexts. Using the Weberian lens, we can see how nonuse of digital technologies is embedded in a dynamic social process, where context shapes and is an outcome: we have a set of non-users and sociotechnical contexts along a continuum. By linking meanings and actions, the interpretive perspective offers a situational analysis of the digital divide, of what non-use represents for individuals, and how it connects with broader societal dimensions. These two studies show that to understand meanings and motivations, we have to frame narratives in a specific context that combines technology, structural (social class, status, age, norms, etc.), and agentic processes. For example, the relational and symbolic nature of concepts of usage and users defined perceptions and influenced practices and actions. For the older “faux-users,” the idea of use was so specific that they considered themselves non-users; for the young adults, practices and meanings of use gave them a legitimate claim to justify their positions of rejection (also visible in their description of SNSs users as narcissistic, shallow, insecure, etc.). Weber’s ideal type is also useful to conceptualize these non-use(s), because it avoids simplistic, rigid, and mutually exclusive categories to explain the agentic and structural sociotechnical reality of uses and non-uses. Our formulation of ideal types follows a set of procedures developed by Weber in different works (1949 [1904], 1981 [1913], 2004a [1922]). Specifically, we mobilize his sociological types, as opposed to his historical types, to invoke the distinction drawn above. We rely on Uta Gerhardt’s (1994) work that rearranged Weber’s procedures in three steps. First, it is central to convert the “‘heterogeneous infinity of social life’ into focused concepts for scientific understanding” (Gerhardt, 1994, p. 86)—for this, one has to collect material in a wide and open manner to uncover patterns and categories. Weber’s example of the ideal type of “handicraft,” referred to earlier, accomplishes this. Second, converting concepts into ideal types must satisfy three validity criteria: (1) no knowledge can contradict the theoretical assumption of a phenomenon in its conceptual representation as an ideal type; (2) its formulation must contain only essential elements; and (3) it has to be found in the socio-historical reality. Third, the ideal type has to be confronted with observed events. For Gerhardt (1994, p. 90), it is also important to: highlight the “case material” (without over-individualizing or over-generalizing), to investigate a comprehensive set of cases from a comparative perspective, and to value biographical processes that enable a deeper understanding of paths/trajectories. This “case material” must be sorted into groups that represent empirical types so we can then proceed with the necessary abstraction to construct ideal types (Gerhardt, 1994).

56  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead Table 4.1  “Case Material” for developing ideal types. “Case Material”

Profiles

Study 1: Older adults and ICTs

–– Users –– Non-users –– Faux-users (use indirectly with assistance of others)

Factors

–– Communication, Family Proximity, Convenience. –– Functional (no access or no skills) and Attitudinal (no interest, perceptions about Internet use). –– Functional (no skills) and attitudinal (strict notion of use). Study 2: Young –– Resisters (never used) –– Low perceived usefulness, “negative” social practices on SNSs. adults and –– Rejecters (drop-outs) rejection of SNSs –– Surrogate Users (use –– Low perceived usefulness, “negative” social practices on SNSs, selfindirectly with no presentation and identity. assistance) –– Low perceived usefulness, “negative” –– Potential Converts social practices on SNSs, self(considering or presentation and identity. reconsidering use) –– Low perceived usefulness, “negative” social practices on SNSs, selfpresentation and identity.

To complete this exercise, we use the results of our studies with older and young adults to provide an example of how ideal types could be formulated as tools to expand our understanding of digital divides. Table 4.1 shows the empirical types uncovered in the two studies, namely profiles (of use, non-use, and inbetween) and factors (i.e., meanings and reasons) associated with those profiles. Considering the types of non-users uncovered empirically, we sketched three ideal types of non-use that connect meanings and actions: intentional, instrumental, and imposed. Intentional and imposed are opposed versions of non-use, represented in its pure form. The intentional type includes non-users who deliberately opted for being excluded from a digital medium and who justify it in a rational and planned mode including attitudinal reasons and social practices (older non-users, younger resisters and rejecters). The imposed type includes non-users that experience functional barriers (no access or no skills) and/or are subject to subtle or strong social pressures to be excluded (agenorms, romantic constraints, context collapse, career options). Finally, the instrumental type sits between the other two and denotes a type of non-use that is flexible and caters to specific situations: indirect use, partial use, covert use, etc. (faux users, surrogate users, and potential converts are subsumed under this type). As with Weber’s examples, the significance of one type requires reference to the entire scheme.

Conclusion The three ideal types we have constructed in this chapter follow Weber’s example by accentuating typical and unique aspects of various forms of non-use,

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 57 representing pure or optimized relations, and refining existing categories (in this case, those of use and non-use). In particular, these ideal types enable us to understand the continuous character of the distinction between use and non-use and the relational nature of this distinction as a sociotechnical process. Non-use cannot be considered to exist on its own, outside of its relation to use and the continuum between them. Furthermore, we must consider the relation that people have to the categories that explain their action. Here, the significance of Weber’s interpretive approach is apparent: categories are not merely imposed by the analyst but are actively employed by people to organize their own experiences. So, the idea of being either a user or non-user orients the “intentional” rejecters we found, whose awareness of these categories and attempts to negotiate them imposes the analytical need for refinement and nuance, as provided by the suggested ideal type. By combining meanings and actions (agentic and structural elements), non-use(s) can be seen as both a multidimensional practice and structure that operates in complex networks. Since the world people face is suffused with meaning and meaningful categories, it is incumbent on the researcher to take account of their actions as if they were responding to and expressing such meaning. This implies, as Weber outlined, that people’s actions cannot be merely “explained” without also being interpreted. Such a duty increases the complexity of the task, so that what would otherwise be described as “use” or “non-use” has to undergo a revision because these categories have meaning for the users and non-users themselves. Actors are not merely interacting with technologies in isolation; rather, such interaction passes through a web of meaningful relations that transforms the technological experience into social action. This is seen in the case of surrogate users, who opt for the “non-user” label, but who make use of social relations to access technologies or the particular affordances of social networking sites (Neves et al., 2015). Thus, they exist on the continuum, irreducible to either non-users (as they might wish to be categorized) or users (as they doubtlessly are). These examples drawn from our findings demonstrate the important gains that the Weberian interpretive approach and the ideal type provide—by employing both, we have attempted to capture the complexity of defining and examining non-use. Without these preliminary efforts, the study of the implications of non-use can be simplistic. As shown here, non-use is not a homogenous or static activity; it is frequently part of a sociotechnical continuum between use and nonuse. Non-Internet use(s) is/are embedded in social and digital processes where context shapes and is shaped. The ideal types we have proposed to capture “nonuse”—intentional, instrumental, and imposed—aim to articulate a social reality that is experienced and routinized by people in their perceptions and practices of that continuum. In a short chapter, we can only sketch arguments and offer a limited exercise. Although this is an innovative attempt at using Weber’s tools within the digital divides field, it is not without limitations. Particularly, attaining the balance between classifying and explaining meanings and actions in a holistic but flexible scheme is not an easy task. The peril of reification is real and Weber left

58  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead no guidelines to avoid it. Nevertheless, we believe this attempt sets the stage for further reflection on non-use(s) and shows the relevance of Weber’s work in the study of digital technologies.

References Ames, M. G., Go, J., Kaye, J. J., & Spasojevic, M. (2011). Understanding technology choices and values through social class. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 55–64). Aron, R. (1961). Introduction to the philosophy of history: an essay on the limits of historical objectivity. NY: Beacon Press. Baumer, E. P., Adams, P., Khovanskaya, V. D., Liao, T. C., Smith, M. E., Schwanda Sosic, V., & Williams, K. (2013). Limiting, leaving and (re) lapsing: an exploration of Facebook non-use practices and experiences. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 3257–3266). Blagoev, D. (2015). Digital divide: middle classes undergoing transformation in a digitizing world. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2784–2800. Blank, G., & Groselj, D. (2015). Examining Internet use through a Weberian lens. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2763–2783. Bruun, H. H., & Whimster, S. (Eds). (2012). Max Weber: collected methodological writings. NY: Routledge. Cahnman, W. J. (1965). Ideal type theory: Max Weber’s concept and some of its derivations. The Sociological Quarterly, 6(3), 268–280. Castells, M. (2001). The Internet galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business, and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. David, M. (2010). Editor’s introduction: methods of interpretive sociology. Methods of interpretive sociology. London: Sage. Eliaeson, S. (2000). Max Weber’s methodology: an ideal-type. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 36(3), 241–263. Eynon, R. & Geniets, A. (2012). On the periphery? Understanding low and discontinued Internet use amongst young people in Britain. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute, Report for the Nominet Trust. Gerhardt, U. (1994). The use of Weberian ideal-type methodology in qualitative data interpretation: an outline for ideal-type analysis. Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique, 45(1), 74–126. Halford, S. & Savage, M. (2010). Reconceptualizing digital social inequality. Information, Communication & Society, 13(7), 937–955. Hargittai, E. (2007). Whose space? Differences among users and non-users of social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 276–297. Hekman, S. J. (1983). Weber’s ideal type: a contemporary reassessment. Polity, 119–137. Kalberg, S. (1994). Max Weber’s comparative-historical sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kuckartz, U. (1991). Ideal types or empirical types: the case of Max Weber’s empirical research. Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique, 32(1), 44–53. Neves, B. B. (2015). Does the Internet matter for strong ties? Bonding social capital, Internet use, and age-based inequality. International Review of Sociology, 25(3), 415–433. Neves, B. B., & Amaro, F. (2012). Too old for technology? How the elderly of Lisbon use and perceive ICT. The Journal of Community Informatics, 8(1), 1–11.

The interpretive and ideal-type approach 59 Neves, B. B., Amaro, F., & Fonseca, J. R. (2013). Coming of (old) age in the digital age: ICT usage and non-usage among older adults. Sociological Research Online, 18(2), 6. Neves, B. B., de Matos, J. M., Rente, R., & Martins, S. L. (2015). The ‘non-aligned’ young people’s narratives of rejection of social networking sites. Young, 23(2), 116–135. Parsons, T. (1964). Introduction. In M. Weber & T. Parsons (Eds.), The theory of social and economic organization (pp. 3–86). NY: The Free Press. Portwood-Stacer, L. (2012). Media refusal and conspicuous non-consumption: the per­ formative and political dimensions of Facebook abstention. New Media & Society, doi: 1461444812465139. Ragnedda, M., & Muschert, G. W. (2013). The digital divide: the Internet and social inequality in international perspective. Oxon: Routledge. Ragnedda, M., & Muschert, G. W. (2015). Max Weber and digital divide studies— introduction. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2757–2762. Robinson, L., Cotten, S. R., Ono, H., Quan-Haase, A., Mesch, G., Chen, W., Stern, M. J., & Hale, T. M. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 569–582. Rogers, R. E. (1969). Max Weber’s ideal type theory. NY: Philosophical Library, Inc. Rosenberg, M. M. (2013). Generally intended meaning, the ‘average’ actor, and Max Weber’s interpretive sociology. Max Weber Studies, 13(1), 39. Rosenberg, M. M. (2016). The conceptual articulation of the reality of life: Max Weber’s theoretical constitution of sociological ideal types. Journal of Classical Sociology, 16, 84–101. Schroeder, R. (2015). A Weberian analysis of global digital divides. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2819–2837. Schroeder, R. & Ling, R. (2013). Durkheim and Weber on the social implications of new information and communication technologies. New Media & Society, doi: 1461444813495157. Swedberg, R., & Agevall, O. (2005). The Max Weber dictionary: key words and central concepts. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Warschauer, M. (2004). Technology and social inclusion: rethinking the digital divide. Boston: MIT Press. Weber, M. (1949 [1904]). Objectivity of social science and social policy. In E. A. Shils & H. A. Finch (Eds.), The methodology of the social sciences (pp. 49–112). NY: Transaction Publishers. Weber, M. (1981 [1913]). Some categories of interpretive sociology. The Sociological Quarterly, 22(2), 151–180. Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism and other writings. New York, NY: Penguin. Weber, M. (2004a [1922]). Basic sociological concepts. In S. Whimster (Ed.), The essential Weber: a reader (pp. 311–358). London: Routledge. Weber, M. (2004b [1921]). Confucianism and Puritanism compared. In S. Whimster (Ed.), The essential Max Weber (pp. 35–54). London: Routledge. Weber, M. (2004c [1921]) Intermediate reflections on the economic ethics of the world religions: theory of the stages and directions of religious rejection of the world. In S. Whimster (Ed.), The essential Max Weber (pp. 215–244). London: Routledge. Weber, M. (2012 [1906]). Objective possibility and adequate causation in the historical causal approach. In Bruun & Whimster (Eds.), Max collected methodological writings (pp. 169–184). London: Routledge.

60  Barbara Barbosa Neves and Geoffrey Mead Wessels, B. (2015). Authentication, status, and power in a digitally organized society. International Journal of Communication, 9, 2801–2818. Witte, J. C., & Mannon, S. E. (2010). The internet and social inequalities. London: Routledge. Wyatt, S. (2003). Non-users also matter: the construction of users and non-users of the Internet. In N. Oudshoorn & T. Pinch (Eds.), How users matter: the co-construction of users and technology (pp. 67–79). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wyatt, S. (2014). Bringing users and non-users into being across methods and disciplines. In CHI 2014 Workshop Considering Why We Should Study Technology Non-use. Wyatt, S., Thomas, G., & Terranova, T. (2002). They came, they surfed, they went back to the beach: conceptualizing use and non-use of the Internet. Virtual Society, 23–40.

Section 2

Associative and communicative perspectives

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5 Disability and digital inequalities Rethinking digital divides with disability theory Gerard Goggin

Introduction Disability has had a chequered career, when it comes to discussions, policies, and practices addressing digital divides and digital inequalities. This is evident when we look at the digital divide, a thoroughly inadequate concept yet still often used to draw attention to issues of inequality in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Digital divide discussions often overlook disability. If addressed, disability is often just “tacked on” to other concerns, and tends to be little understood – despite a broadly shared, “nodding” recognition that disability must now be part of any serious attempt to grasp digital inequality. It does not help that there has been an awkward fit between disability and the concept of “digital divide”. At least as much as other areas, if not more, the lack of theorizing of digital divide has resulted in a flawed and narrow understanding of how disability relates to digital inequality. The implications of this theoretical cul-de-sac are not just a problem for disability. As I shall argue, we cannot have an adequate understanding of digital inequality and divides unless we engage with, and draw upon, critical theories of disability. In making this argument, I rely on assumptions which have wide support among digital divide researchers. To start with, while the “digital divide” is a term that has its uses – mainly to draw attention to injustice and unfairness in the realm of digital technologies and society; and also as a “rough” category to constellate research and policy efforts, as, for instance, embodied in the longstanding Partnership for Progress on the Digital Divide (www.ppdd.org/) in which I have been involved – the inherent suggestion is that it encapsulates the flawed notion that there is a clearly identifiable chasm when it comes to digital technology. This critique of the concept of digital divides, singular and plural, has been consistently raised, and the literature has gone well beyond the binary division, in acknowledgement, as Eszter Hargittai and Yuli Patrick Hsieh have put it, that “it is better to recognize that individuals, organizations, and countries may be differentiated by online experiences and abilities beyond core technical access” (Hargittai & Hsieh, 2013, p. 129). Consequently, research, policy, and public discourse alike have moved on to other concepts, such as “social inclusion” (Warschauer, 2004; Sparks, 2013; Andreasson, 2015). In particular the liaison between social inclusion

64  Gerard Goggin and digital divide is very interesting and needs further investigation. This shift can suit the purposes of government and corporate interests, of course (cf. the moves of the Bush government in the US, for instance, noted by Wilhelm, 2004, p. 80). Nonetheless, when digital divide is retained, there is a common acknowledgement that it is surely complex, dynamic, gradual, differential, specific to location and context, and inflected by the media, information, and communication “repertoire” of individuals and their groups (van Dijk & Hacker, 2003; Donner, 2015). So there are a long list of inter-related factors: users, their socio-demographics, settings, patterns of access and use, and social contexts and media geographies; infrastructures, market conditions, and policies; available technologies (hardware and software), affordances, content, format, and applications; as well as literacy and education, user support, and social and cultural capital. My preferred approach is to re-centre discussion on the concept of “digital inequalities” (Robinson et al., 2015), which helps us navigate between the tensions of being too “digital-” or “media-” centric (Couldry, 2012), on the one hand, and not paying sufficient attention to the particular role digital technologies do play in inequality. As Hargittai and Hsieh point out: digital inequality can refer both to how existing social inequalities influence the adoption and use of digital technologies as well as how differential uses of the Internet itself may influence social stratification. (2013, p. 141) Over a decade ago, Jan van Dijk pointed us firmly in this direction. Crucially, van Dijk contended that “[u]nequal access to digital technologies brings about unequal participation in society” (Van Dijk, 2005, p. 15). That is, he emphasized that digital technologies are involved in a crucial intermediate process in the overarching forces and structures in social life. In his account, Van Dijk briefly discusses the “disability gap”, or relatively unequal access to and use of digital technologies by people with disabilities, but does not otherwise specifically discuss the disability dimensions and dynamics of social or digital inequality. As I shall outline, such an account is developed by a small handful of scholars, especially Paul T. Jaeger in his pioneering book-length study, Disability and the Internet: confronting a digital divide (2012). At this point, let me note that historically there has been a long recognition that disability is often closely entwined with inequality. However, the approaches used to understand and address inequality have been widely debated as they have evolved over the past two centuries. Especially with the advent of the welfare state in the twentieth century and its aftermath stretching into the early decades of the twenty-first century (Greve, 2013), the issues for disability have remained relatively obscure in wider debate and research (Nussbaum, 2006; Priestley, 2005; Oliver, 2012). This is perforce the case concerning disability and digital inequality. Given disability remains an area of social and digital life not well understood, in the first part of this chapter I review and analyse the ways that disability has been discussed in digital divide and associated digital inequality and inclusion

Disability and digital inequalities 65 literature. In the second part, I offer a brief account of the main social theories of disability relevant to theorize technology. I suggest what an adequate account of disability and technology can bring to gain a better understanding of disability issues for digital inequality – but for a bolder, fundamental move to draw on disability to tackle many of the key problems digital divide theorists and policymakers have confronted for two-plus decades. I also propose key elements of an ideal approach to digital inequality that are evident when we do rethink the digital divide via disability theory, then make some concluding remarks.

Disability in digital divide and inequality theories The first elaborated scholarly attempt to comprehend disability as an integral part of the digital divide is Kerry Dobransky and Eszter Hargittai’s pioneering paper, “The Disability Divide in Internet Access and Use” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006). Dobransky and Hargittai draw attention to various issues in the emerging research that remain applicable. First, they note that “many existing studies draw from small and/or non-representative samples” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006, p. 314). Presumably this would be a problem that could be addressed by large and representative sample sizes, however, they find that the “[North American] studies that have used large, random samples (Kaye, 2000; Lenhart et al., 2003; Mann et al., 2005; NTIA, 2000, 2002) have limited their analysis to descriptive statistics” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2016, p. 314). The second issue Dobransky and Hargittai detect is that “there has been little consistency between studies in the definition of disability… due to the fact that the definition of what constitutes disability is debated” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006, p. 314). Dobransky and Hargittai argue that “[t]aken together, these issues have hampered attempts to discern causal relationships concerning digital inequality regarding disability status” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006, p. 314). In the intervening period, the situation Dobransky and Hargittai characterize has improved, but these basic problems of the research and conceptualization concerning disability and digital inequality still remain. So it is important to review their analysis and the subsequent research to better come to grips with these fundamental problems. Dobransky and Hargittai’s paper is premised on critical analysis of a large, robust data set, viz. representative data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the United States Census from a survey conducted in 2003. In doing so, Dobransky and Hargittai offer a much better theorization of disability than those of the preceding empirical, quantitative studies. They note that key shortcomings of the existing research have been in understanding the “relative impact of disability”, and a focus on just understanding the “differences in access to ICTs” rather than “differences in what people do online once they have gained access” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2006, p. 319). They note the importance of understanding how “other statuses interact with disability in regard to ICT access” but nonetheless do perceive a “disability divide” (p. 138). Broadly speaking, their findings hold true a decade later. Since the first wave of serious attention accorded disability in the early 2000s, there have been several significant attempts that explicitly reference and draw

66  Gerard Goggin upon the digital divide concept in understanding disability and digital inequality. Broadly speaking, the most systematic work has come from the US, UK, and Europe, with scattered studies from a few other countries (such as Australia, and some Asian countries). A key study is a 2007 survey of local residents belonging to socially excluded groups in the British city of Sunderland. This research raises significant questions about the dominant social imaginary of digital technology supporting social transformation for people with disabilities. As researchers Stephen Macdonald and John Clayton put it: “there is still a long way to go before digital technology successfully impacts on the lives of disabled people in order to reduce social exclusion” (Macdonald & Clayton, 2013, p. 716). Another notable conceptual, as well as empirical, contribution is that of María Rosalía Vicente and Ana Jesús López, with their view of the “digital divide between people with disabilities and the rest of the population as a multidimensional phenomenon” based on a 2005 data set of users in ten European countries (Vicente & López, 2010, p. 49). They also underscore the need to understand how people with disabilities negotiate the threshold technology to access and use the Internet (Vicente & López, 2010, 62). The most systematic account to date is Paul T. Jaeger’s Disability & the Internet: confronting a digital divide (Jaeger, 2012), which looks across a wide range of Internet-enabled technologies and settings in the US, which he brings together in a comprehensive account of disability and digital divide. Jaeger notes that the advent of the Internet raises the stakes in equality, especially for people with disabilities, suggesting that the “need for equal access to the Internet is the most pressing of civil rights issues that people with disabilities now face, and it is the biggest challenge they must overcome” (Jaeger, 2012, pp. 178–179). His work, and subsequent studies (cf. Jayakar et al.’s 2015 US and Asia-Pacific comparative study) leave no doubt that there remain stark inequalities when it comes to access and use between the populations that might be categorized as people with disabilities and those not regarded as having significant disability and impairment. There are important reflections arising from the relatively slim yet rich literature on disability and digital divide. Fortunately, there is a handy marker to gauge the progress and issues remaining. In 2016, Dobransky and Hargittai returned to the topic with a thoughtful paper that offers a handy signpost for where conceptualization of disability and digital divide agenda sit (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2016). Dobransky and Hargittai note that people with disabilities are “stigmatized and excluded in many domains of life, with consequences for their health and wealth”, and that as well as “being a marginalized status in its own right, disability tends to overlap with other disadvantaged positions in society, multiplying exclusion” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2016, p. 1). Given this situation of inequality and exclusion, there is widespread interest in whether and how ICTs could make a difference for the better. Yet as Dobransky and Hargittai note, “relatively little research examines how PWD [Persons with Disabilities] compare to others in incorporating such resources [of ICTs] into their everyday life” (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2016, p. 2). In analysing US data sets, Dobransky and Hargittai draw on recent advances in disability theory, including a very interesting use of the concept of “disability culture”. Disability culture is the idea that there are identities,

Disability and digital inequalities 67 meanings, rituals, infrastructures, and resources – the stuff of culture as a “way of life”, as cultural theorist Raymond Williams famously put it (Williams, 1968) – that are crucial to the social participation of people with disabilities (Kuppers, 2014; Mitchell & Snyder, 2000, 2015; McRuer, 2006; Siebers, 2008) that might be available if people cannot avail themselves of sufficient resources in the digital realm (Ellis, 2015). In light of this brief discussion of the research, bookended by two key papers, we can see that disability makes a serious entry into digital divide and inequality research in the early 2000s. While we have notable research that has advanced our understanding of the dynamics of disability and digital inequality, the area has a long way to go before we have the kind of sophisticated conceptualization and research agenda that exists in other kindred areas (for example, gender, income and wealth, location, and other kinds of inequality). One area where this has occurred to some extent is the critical literature on web accessibility (Adam & Kreps, 2006; Ellcessor, 2016; Lewthwaite, 2014), though, interestingly, it has not been as explicitly connected to digital divides and inequalities discussion. As disability is finally gaining recognition across various relevant disciplines, there are good prospects the research base will improve markedly. What this new research points up is the continuing fundamental problem in theorizing digital divides and inequality: the bedrock understanding of disability. Theories of disability have gone ahead in leaps and bounds, yet such conceptual innovation has not been sufficiently registered in the framing of digital inequalities by both specialist and non-specialist researchers.

Uses of disability theory for rethinking digital inequality Globally, many people would be aware that a seismic shift is underway in how societies approach disability (Heyer, 2015). The previous ways of seeing disability, summed up in constructs such as the “charity” discourse, and the “medical” (or “bio-medical”) model, of disability, have been dislodged and challenged by a range of other approaches. Broadly, these alternative models seek to grasp the “relations” of disability – how disability is decisively shaped by dynamic social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics, rather than being a relatively fixed aspect of someone’s body and mind, and thus subject to “special treatment”, exclusion, and segregation, often in the form of regimes of medical and health treatment, welfare and work systems dedicated for people with disabilities, as well as deep cultural and social dynamics of disablism. Such alternative approaches have a common interest in challenging the oppressive situation in which people with disabilities find themselves. In technology research, the famous “social model” of disability (Barnes & Mercer, 2005; Oliver, 2012) stemming from British theorists and activists was influential on early critical theory on disability and technology, such as Alan Roulstone’s pioneering book on work, technology, and disability (Roulstone, 1998). The social model is explicitly used, for instance, in an important 2005 paper

68  Gerard Goggin on the digital divide in China that sought to assess the prospects for the Internet to improve social participation (Guo, Bricout, & Huang, 2005, p. 51). Subsequent theoretical and political debates about disability – including critiques of the social model (e.g. Shakespeare, 2014) – have generated alternative approaches to disability, pointing out the foundational ways in which disability is structured into the power relations and inequalities of societies (Davis, 2013; Grue, 2015; Watson, Roulstone, & Thomas, 2012). Allied with the disability human rights movement, such ferment has helped bring about the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which is deeply informed by the new social, cultural, and human rights approaches to disability. As noted by various scholars, the CRPD puts an obligation on signatory governments to implement an extensive number of entitlements to accessible digital technologies. Advising and guiding the UN on this effort is the organization called G3ict (the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies). Headquarted in Atlanta, Georgia, G3ict aims to “facilitate and support the implementation of the dispositions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the accessibility of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and assistive technologies”, relying on an international network of accessibility experts to “develop and promote good practices, technical resources and benchmarks” (www.g3ict.org/about). All very promising, but the scale and scope of the task is Herculean, which is where the need for better theory comes in. This is especially pressing because digital technologies are crucial to human rights now, yet the main frameworks used to understand digital inequality often fail to engage disability in any serious or sophisticated sense. On the occasions when disability is a focus, its basic character and its wide diversity is not acknowledged. So we see that important areas of digital inequality have been neglected. A key example here are the concerns of people with cognitive impairments, as Peter Blanck has comprehensively shown in his study of people with cognitive disabilities and “web equality” (Blanck, 2014). Rather than a multifaceted approach being adopted, too often digital divide and equality accounts follow the technology, communication, and media areas with their default tendency to allow particular kinds of disability, construed often in narrow ways, to stand in for the complex whole. Particular notions of physical disability – for instance, an assumed ideal type of the wheelchair user, or impairment category (such as a stereotype of a Blind or Deaf user) often are the reflex response, and many kinds of impairments and situations and experiences of disability are overlooked. Also challenging is the recognition that many people may have a combination of different impairments, and that disability is dynamic, changing over time, life course, and with distinct implications for people in different locations and sociodemographic groups. The need to move forward in understanding disability is something raised by Eliza Varney in her comparative technology of disability, accessibility, and media policy, when she argues that “[r]egulatory frameworks must move away from a hierarchy of disabilities in the regulation of ICTs, and must offer accessibility solutions that rely upon a wide definition of disability” (2013).

Disability and digital inequalities 69 Thus, challenging the taken-for-granted nature of disability in digital inequal­ ities frameworks is a necessary first step. It also has a potentially very widereaching benefit, because re-theorizing disability in digital equality will help us understand how disability is deeply involved in the construction and governance of “norms” in society and technology generally (Tremain, 2005). A key part of the theoretical impasse for digital divide and inequality frameworks has been the dearth of critical research and conceptions of disability and technology. So, there has been even lesser theoretical, conceptual, and methodological traffic among disability technology researchers and digital divide researchers than can be seen in other areas (though, in these areas also, much more cross-fertilization would be welcome). This is now no longer the case, as a number of substantial accounts of disability and technology are now available, that taken together help us shift the foundations of work on digital inequality (Alper, 2017; Ellcessor & Kirkpatrick, 2017; Ellis & Kent, 2011; Ellis & Goggin, 2015; Goggin & Newell, 2003; Mills, 2017; Roulstone, 2016). In particular, here it is useful to draw upon Alan Roulstone’s 2016 account, where he lays out an argument for a “complex model of disability and technology”, that would: seek international evidence, to acknowledge diverse social and cultural contexts, to register disabled people’s perceptions and experience and to factor in age, generation, gender, impairment and locality wherever possible. The increasing marketization of technology, aids and equipment also requires a greater understanding of the interplay between “need”, market-imperative and the just allocation of technologies to provide assistance. (2016, pp. 2–3) Roulstone underscores the unpredictable complexity of disability and technology, suggesting that only by “comprehending the above mix of variables can technology, enablement and the social gains and disbenefits of technology be fully understood” (Roulstone, 2016, p.3). Roulstone notes the unpredictability by which technology might be experienced as serendipitous, such as text messaging for Deaf people, or perceived as threatening and negative, such as the cochlear implant is viewed by many in the Deaf community. Further, it might be noted that digital technology, as well as potentially providing a boon, in the ways that Jaeger or Roulstone discuss it, can also be deeply inscribed in new systems of control and governance of disability and normalcy – involving new kinds of constraints, oppression, and duties, as well as new rights and opportunities, and the nature and price of connection (Couldry, 2016) of “being digital citizens” (Isin & Ruppert, 2015). In the spirit of van Dijk, we could summarize these alternative ideas about digital technology and disability in the following statements, which could reorient a new potential theory of digital inequality: 1

Disability is socially shaped, and crucially arises from historically long-lived, yet culturally specific and adaptable, systems of power that sort, order, value, govern, and oppress people in relation to binaries of disabled/non-disabled;

70  Gerard Goggin 2 Disability spans a wide variety of different bodies, conditions, and situations, and people can easily – and more often than not (especially due to age, war, poverty, gender, violence, work conditions, accidents, and so on) – find themselves more or less “disabled”, identifying or dis-identifying with disability, through the course of their lives; 3 In relation to technology, there are many ways in which barriers, obstacles, and inaccessibility can be “built-in” systems, rather than producing “enabling” environments, which seek to make technology accessible, usable, and respond to user needs and preferences; 4 Disability has an especially close association with design, offering many ways to rethink “universal” and “inclusive design”; 5 Disability also involves new aspects of literacy, education, and user support, requiring accessible formats and inclusive education, as well as drawing attention to cultural and linguistic aspects of digital inequality (the importance of sign language for Deaf communities, for instance); 6 There is a high incident of people with disabilities in the “majority world”, or “global south”, the low-income countries where for much of the population digital inequality is profound; and yet many of the proffered solutions for global connectivity, such as cheap mobile phones, fall well short of meeting the needs, preferences, and desires of users with disabilities; 7 Due to the social inequalities associated with and creating disability, and lack of support and resourcing for advocacy and participation in decisionmaking and governance, people with disabilities are marginalized in the research, policy, technology design, and policy formulation relating to digital inequality. With these elements for a disability-adequate theory of digital inequality in mind, how would we mobilize and operationalize such understandings? First, we need to revisit and fundamentally revise our definitions of disability to acknowledge contemporary accounts and theories of disability. Second, we need to extend our efforts to gain a clear picture of persons’ with disabilities use, consumption, and access when it comes to digital technologies. This will involve better designed, more accurate, comprehensive data, including: • • • •

greatly improved national-level data on people with disabilities and digital technologies, based on best available categories of identifying disability, as well as best available categories of technology, use, and social practices; systematic data on people with disabilities and digital technologies internationally, especially countries, when no or little data is available; qualitative research on the diversity of disability and digital technology users, especially exploring “intersectional” aspects combining disability, gender, sexuality, race, caste, income, and other aspects; systematic research on what kind of policies, initiatives, and measures are most effective in addressing digital inequality issues for people with disabilities;

Disability and digital inequalities 71 •

•

extending research across the new frontiers of digital society and participation for people with disabilities, including: audiovisual media, including new kinds of Internet-based television; e-books, and new publishing and reading formats; access to and capabilities of essential and emerging infrastructures, such as Wi-Fi; networked public and political participation; digital government, beyond web accessibility, such as “digital by default” provision of government services; libraries; new areas of participatory digital culture, including “maker spaces”; data infrastructures and cultures; systematic research and policy initiatives on disability and participatory design.

Third, there are major challenges in the participation of people with disabilities in the debates, policy processes, initiatives, and design when it comes to tackling digital inequality. So this needs to be a priority area, not just in its own right, but to be incorporated in the framing and conduct of global initiatives to address digital inequality.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have sought to reflect on the place of disability in digital divide, digital inequality, and associated theories. As I have suggested, disability has been present from early on in the history of digital divide discussions. The research and policy literatures and debates, as well as the measures and experiments undertaken, have expanded in recent times, and there are important advances in extending access, participation, use, and inclusion. Yet, there remains a great shortfall. Rather than just redoubling our efforts – which certainly would be a good thing! – my argument is that we should take the opportunity offered by this volume to consider what the impasse might be. What I have contended is that we need to go much deeper in thinking about disability, digital technology, and inequality. Here, as I have argued, critical theories of disability and technology are crucial. Such theories, as I have suggested, stand to give us a more accurate understanding of disability in its diversities, across the course of individual lives, across cultures and communities, and across public, private, and everyday life. There is an extraordinary centrality of digital technology to the participation, social lives, opportunities, and freedoms of people with disabilities, which, as key scholars remind us, needs to be approached carefully, as whether it is a boon or a further source of exclusion and oppression is often unclear, especially early on in the process of adoption of new technologies. Thus, combined with interdisciplinary research, such theories offer rich resources indeed to help us think about the stakes in digital inequality, and offer a tool for opening up technologies and their social, political, economic, and cultural arrangements in ways that are consistent with democratic aspirations. Finally, not only is the question of how we theorize disability and digital inequality a very important issue, it has wider ramifications for how we understand humans, social life, and our worlds in which technology plays such a vital

72  Gerard Goggin role. Thus, re-theorizing disability and technology will make a rich contribution towards the project of rethinking the foundational assumptions underpinning digital theory and digital inequality theory generally.

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Disability and digital inequalities 73 Isin, E., & Ruppert, E. (2015). Being digital citizens. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Jaeger, P. T. (2012). Disability and the Internet: confronting a digital divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rieger. Jayakar, K., Liu, C., Madden, G., & Park, E-A. (2015). Promoting broadband and ICT access for disabled persons: comparative analysis of initiatives in Asia-Pacific region. The Information Society, 31(4), 299–314. Kaye, H. S. (2000). Computer and Internet use among people with disabilities. Washington, DC: US Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Available online at http://akmhcweb.org/Docs/computerREPORT13.pdf. Kuppers, P. (2014). Studying disability arts and culture: an introduction. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lenhart, A., Horrigan, J., Allen, K., Boyce, A., Madden, M., & O’Grady, E. (2003). The ever-shifting Internet population: a new look at Internet access and the digital divide. Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project. Available online at www. pewinternet.org/2003/04/16/the-ever-shifting-internet-population-a-new-look-atinternet-access-and-the-digital-divide/. Lewthwaite, S. (2014). Web accessibility standards and disability: developing critical perspectives on accessibility. Disability and Rehabilitation, 36(16), 1375–1383. Macdonald, S. J., & Clayton, J. (2013). Back to the future, disability and the digital divide. Disability & Society, 28(5), 702–718. McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press. Mann, W. C., Belchoir, P., Tomita, M. R., & Kemp, B. J. (2005). Computer use by middleaged and older adults with disabilities. Technology and Disability, 17, 1–9. Mills, M. (2017). On the phone: deafness and communication engineering. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mitchell, D. T., & Snyder, S. (2000). Narrative prosthesis: disability and the dependencies of discourse. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Mitchell, D. T., & Snyder, S. L. (2015). The biopolitics of disability: neoliberalism, ablenationalism, and peripheral embodiment. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Oliver, M. (2012). The new politics of disablement. 2nd ed. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Priestley, M. (2005). Disability and social inequalities. In M. Romero & E. Margolis (Eds), Blackwell companion to social inequalities (Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 372–395. Robinson, L., Cotton, S. R., Ono, H., Quan-Haase, A., Mesch, G., Chen, W., Schulz, J., Hale, T. M., & Stern, M. J. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 569–582. Roulstone, A. (1998). Enabling technology: disabled people, work, and new technology. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Roulstone, A. (2016). Disability and technology: an interdisciplinary and international approach. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Shakespeare, T. (2014). Disability rights and wrongs revisited. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Siebers, T. (2008). Disability theory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press peer inclusion. Disability & Society, 25(3), 303–315. Sparks, C. (2013). What is the ‘digital divide’, and why is it important? Javnost – The Public, 20(2), 27–46.

74  Gerard Goggin Tremain, S. (Ed.). (2005). Foucault and the government of disability. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Van Dijk, J. (2005). The deepening divide: inequality in the information society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Van Dijk, J., & Hacker, K. (2003). The digital divide as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. The Information Society, 19(4), 315–326. Varney, E. (2013). Disability and information technology: a comparative study in media regulation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vicente, M. R., & López, A. J. (2010). A multidimensional analysis of the disability digital divide: some evidence for Internet use. Information Society, 26(1), 48–64. Warschauer, M. (2004). Technology and social inclusion: rethinking the digital divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Watson, N., Roulstone, A., & Thomas, C. (Eds). (2012). Routledge handbook of disability studies. New York: Routledge. Wilhelm, A. G. (2004). Digital nation: towards an inclusive information society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, R. (1968). Culture and society. London: Penguin.

6 “The language metaphor” An epistemological approach to the digital divide Lorenzo Dalvit

Introduction This chapter explores how digitality as a language operates in relation to power, and if the notion of a “divide” is still meaningful. A parallel will be drawn between digitality and English as hegemonic global languages in the respective domains (technological and linguistic). The conceptualisation of Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a language, i.e. as a codified system of symbols through which reality can be encoded, is not new. Manovic (2001) proposes an analysis of the impact of digitality in the work “the language of new media”. Before him, Hooper (1999) suggests viewing ICT as a language to explore its cognitive potential. Attempts have even been made at teaching programming languages as natural languages to young children (Koerner, 2013). However, the implications of the language metaphor in terms of the power dynamics associated with ICT remain relatively unexplored. Foucault (1972) notes language is the primary tool for the reproduction of power. The relationship between language and power has been researched extensively from theories of language learning to policy to sociolinguistics (Fairclough, 1989, Mesthrie et al., 2009). I draw on this body of work to propose a novel way of looking at the digital divide.

Language, ICT and different forms of capital Language and ICT can be seen as tools of communication and, as such, they do not necessarily challenge or entrench existing power relationships. However, in both academic and public debate, their role as empowering or disempowering tools has been the object of intense scrutiny. Bourdieu (1977) coined the term “linguistic capital”, which is a form of cultural capital that refers to one’s ability to use language as a praxis, i.e. “in strategies which are invested with all possible functions and not only communication functions” (p. 646). With specific reference to ICT, Dean (2005) draws on Bourdieu’s distinction between the meaning and value/power of communication to critically observe the emergence of a global communicative capitalism, which reduces the communicative value of messages and entrenches commercial exploitation of the digital sphere. In terms of the digital divide, such exploitation rests on differences in terms of three forms of capital, i.e. economic, cultural and social.

76  Lorenzo Dalvit The so called “digital leapfrog” of Africa and other parts of the developing world often refers to impressive progress in the deployment of infrastructure, diffusion of ICT devices and Internet penetration (Fink and Kenny, 2003; Semali, 2012). Donner (2008) notes how the experience of Internet users in the developing world can be increasingly characterised as mobile-first, mobile-centric and often mobile-only. The particular characteristics of the pay-as-you-go mobile Internet (e.g. its relatively high costs and low speed determine particular forms of online participation, different from the experience of uncapped fixed-line broadband users in the First World). While economic capital is a precondition to acquiring the ICT devices which enable physical access, ICT can promote economic development (Goldstuck, 2012). Drori and Jan (2003) note the two-way relationship between economic development and ICT penetration and emphasise the importance of cultural and social capital. Once the availability of ICT makes it possible to physically access the Internet, users need to gain epistemological access in order to take advantage of the new technologies. Epistemological access refers to systematic, coherent and meaningful ways of understanding and engaging with knowledge (Morrow, 2007). Just as the constraints and affordances of different technologies (e.g. mobile) determine the emergence of particular forms of physical access, the ability to effectively use technology is influenced by a wide range of factors such as literacy levels and proficiency in the language of the user interface. ICT is shaped by the cultural conventions of the West (Dalvit et al., 2008; Thinyane et al., 2007) and largely relies on metaphors rooted in Western culture. Besides being culturally distant, ICT functions primarily in a second language, i.e. English, in which many people are not proficient (Maseko et al., 2010; Crystal, 2001). People who do not possess the relevant (Western) cultural capital have to grapple with the acquisition of ICT as well as the associated culture, in much the same way that people who are not native English speakers often have to grapple with the language as well as with content available in it (Dlamini, 2001). Socio-cultural theories of language learning state that social interaction and cultural institutions have an important role to play in a person’s cognitive growth and development (Donato and McCormick, 1994). Shirky (2008) points to the catalytic potential of ICT penetration on a large scale and postulates that large numbers of interconnected people can generate a “cognitive surplus” which can be applied to solving social problems. Lievrouw and Livingstone (2006) adopt a more critical perspective and note how the pervasiveness of ICT means it affects both users and non-users. The concept of ubiquity captures the influence of digital technology across all domains and its role in more and more aspects of daily life. As digitality becomes the language in which reality is encoded within an increasingly interconnected world, it redefines or entrenches existing power dynamics. On the one hand, social relations increasingly depend on digital interaction. Digitality is a precondition to maintain and accumulate one’s social capital, i.e. the material and immaterial benefits accruing from belonging to a certain group or knowing certain people. On the other hand, a critical mass of ICT users in one’s social circle is necessary to take advantage of the empowering potential of ICT (James, 2005).

“The language metaphor” 77

Digitality divides The concept of a digital divide emerged in the 1990s (Hargittai, 2003) as a result of the fast diffusion of digital technologies on a global scale and the associated inequalities. As the Global North was leading in technological innovation, this divide referred to differences in ICT access along geographical lines. James (2005, p. 144) defines the global digital divide as “the differential degree to which rich and poor countries benefit from new information and communication technologies such as the Internet” and is often measured quantitatively in terms of number of people with individual access in different countries. Drori and Jan (2003) note the limitations of this approach by highlighting how inequalities appear to widen or narrow depending on the dimensions taken into account. These authors also note that “the global digital divide is more a product of networking into global society than it is a mere reflection of local economic capabilities” (Drori and Jan, 2003, p. 144). Furthermore, they emphasise the importance of looking at the diffusion of technology in any given society and not just its elites. Castells (2010) revised his famous claim that there were more phone lines in Manhattan and Tokyo than in the whole of Africa and introduced the concept of a “Fourth World” to refer to those in both developed and developing countries who are excluded or positioned at the periphery of the network society. In his network theories of power, Castells (2011) notes how power is exerted through global networks by making it undesirable to be excluded (networking power) but at the same time by including peripheral nodes in a subordinate position. In terms of the language metaphor, one can draw a parallel with the use of English as a global lingua franca, which supports contact and communication while entrenching the power of those who are proficient in it (i.e. the periphery) (Seidlhofer et al., 2006). The term “digital natives” refers to those who grew up with technology, as opposed to those who encountered it at a later stage in their life and who are termed “digital immigrants” (Prensky, 2001). This distinction draws on the migration metaphor contrasting an indigenous population with immigrants, but might as well be associated with the distinction between native speakers of a language and those who learnt it later in life as a result of migration. As the first generation of digital natives comes to age in many parts of the world, this distinction has come under scrutiny (Helsper and Eynon, 2010; Nasah et al., 2010). Generally speaking, young people learn how to use technology faster and more effectively than old ones (Bayne and Ross, 2011). This research, conducted mainly among relatively affluent users in Europe and the USA (Prensky, 2011), confirms the advantage of such parts of the world as firstcomers to the information age. With the booming penetration of technology – particularly mobile phones – in all parts of the globe, the Fourth World is shrinking (Donner, 2008). Discussions around the digital divide progressively shifted from global to domestic digital divides, i.e. differences within countries in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, ability/disability (Obayelu and Ogunlade, 2006; Vicente and Lopez, 2010; Hache and Cullen, 2010). Compared to previous forms of ICT, mobile devices appear to give a technological advantage to minorities (Gunzo and Dalvit, 2012)

78  Lorenzo Dalvit and women (Roux and Dalvit, 2014). A possible hypothesis is that ICT access is perceived as a way to acquire status, e.g. by rural women in a patriarchal society (Mapi et al., 2008). Edward (1995) notes a similar orientation among women seeking to acquire status through the mastery of English. The dichotomy between information haves and have nots has gradually been overcome in favour of more nuanced understandings of the continuum between the two extremes. Drori and Jan (2003) note the importance of focusing on intensity of use rather than use or no use. The complexities of granularity and use (see Doong and Ho, 2012) cannot be reduced to an either/or dichotomy and are best captured by the concept of “digital fluency”. Drawing on the language metaphor, Resnick (2001) argues that the ability to use technology can be equated to the ability to speak a second or foreign language. As such, different levels can be mapped on a continuum from zero to complete fluency (Wang et al., 2012). While fluency refers to the ability to reformulate knowledge and being able to express oneself creatively and effectively in the digital space (Wang et al., 2012), proficiency also captures an individual’s ability to develop and adjust the levels of ICT skills and knowledge depending on the context in which he or she intends to apply them (ECDL, 2011). Proficiency refers not only to one’s epistemological access and skills, but also to the knowledge of how to use ICT appropriately and across different domains (see Palmer, 2011). In Bourdieu’s (1977) terms, fluency refers to linguistic competence while proficiency encapsulates the notion of linguistic capital. I would therefore argue in favour of the use of digital proficiency as a more comprehensive and nuanced term, shifting the focus from skills and use to their consequences (see Attewell, 2001).

Digitality as a hegemonic language Digitality presents the characteristics of a hegemonic global language. Castells (2007) notes how power within a network is exerted more effectively through meaning-making and persuasion than through coercion. Gramsci (1999) refers to domination by consent as opposed to coercion with the term “hegemony”. This form of covert control rests on its acceptance by those who are dominated. The belief in the empowering potential of technology and its subsequent uptake by an increasing number of people further entrenches its dominant role in daily life. Janks (2004) terms “access paradox”: the fact that the more people learn a dominant language, even when this disempowers them, the more they entrench that language’s dominant and potentially oppressive role. Phillipson (1992) identifies three categories of meanings entrenching the hegemonic role of English as an imperialist language. In exploring the language metaphor, it is worth discussing digitality in terms of such categories, i.e. intrinsic, extrinsic and functional. Intrinsic refers to the meanings associated with what a language is. For example, English is considered superior to other languages in terms of its large vocabulary and complex grammar, which may enable one to convey complex thoughts, nuanced feelings, etc. (Siegel et al., 1995). Drawing on the distinction between cold and hot media made by McLuhan (1964), Manovich (2001) identifies several

“The language metaphor” 79 “principles” specific to new media. He notes how modularity, hypertextuality, multimediality, etc. characterise digitality as a language. Ahonen (2008) notes that digital media such as the Internet and mobile phones include all the capabilities of previous media, i.e. print, recordings, cinema, radio and TV and add the capability to search and interact. Digital media can be argued to represent a new language based on previous media, the way English is phylogenetically related to Germanic and Latin languages and retains some of the intrinsic characteristics of both (Kirby, 2007). The digital revolution is often compared in its significance to the invention of the printing press, which enabled the emergence of mass literacy (Moore, 2007). Hockanson and Hooper (2000) emphasise the cognitive potential of ICT. They note that people who can read and write think differently from those who cannot. These authors argue that ICT represents a particular way of encoding reality and that it might bring about a paradigmatic shift in our conception of knowledge and of learning (see also Hargittai, 2002; Cooper, 2006; Watson, 2001; Wilson, 2003). This claim is supported by research suggesting that ICT use affects the brain (Howard-Jones, 2011). The hypothesis that digital proficiency affects thinking resonates with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, according to which the intrinsic characteristics of a language shape the way speakers of that language think. While no conclusive evidence exists to support or reject the hypothesis, it is often used as an intrinsic argument to entrench the use of a dominant language (Kay and Kempton, 1984). Extrinsic refers to what a language has, i.e. to the material and immaterial resources it gives access to. In the case of a language such as English, these resources include books, audio and video in that language as well as knowledge and skills, such as the knowledge encapsulated in it and the education it gives access to. Likewise, digitality is associated with newer and newer devices and ever expanding networks as well as a wealth of content and services. Success stories such as M-Pesa and Ushahidi in Kenya (Okolloh, 2009) provide a strong argument in favour of promoting access to ICT for members of marginalised communities. Many ICT-for-development initiatives are informed by a belief in the empowering potential of digital technology. While the possible negative impact of technology on health and behavior is attracting more and more attention (Jie and Jiang, 2008), the extrinsic argument in favour of digitality for empowerment is rarely questioned. Functional refers to what a language does. English has instrumental value as an asset (e.g. to get an education and find a job) as well as symbolic value (e.g. as a marker of social identity and status). The instrumental value of technology is captured by what Hawkridge (1989) calls the vocational rationale for computers in schools, i.e. the need for students to be prepared for a technology-rich workplace. The ubiquity of ICT makes it increasingly difficult and expensive (in terms of money and missed opportunities) not to become digitally proficient. Such claim increasingly applies to developmental contexts and people across all divides. Conversely, ICT can support a more efficient use of resources and cut costs. Research in a South African rural area exemplifies how ICT can help local people to organise transport and manage savings more efficiently, thus saving

80  Lorenzo Dalvit time and money (Buthulezi, 2015). The symbolic value of digitality refers to its association with power and being modern. Mobile phones are often displayed as status symbols to signify one’s social standing (Collopan, 2015).

Digital registers When considering the empowering potential of technology, distinctions must be made between different uses and their instrumental and symbolic power. Such uses of technology are often context-specific and can be considered as different “digital registers”. The distinction between basic computer literacy and advanced programming skills can serve as an example. The former may relate to basic communication in informal domains, while the latter refers to cognitively demanding tasks in a specialised and high-status domain. Cummins (2009) distinguishes between Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). He maintains that somebody may display BICS in a second language, but this does not automatically translate into CALP in that language. While CALP can be transferred from one’s first to any second language with relative ease, its development solely in a second language poses particular challenges. One could argue that those who are not literate enough to function at a cognitively demanding level in reading and writing may not be able to do so in the digital sphere, thus reproducing existing inequalities. A lack of social and cultural capital (one of the markers of inequality according to Cleaver (2005)) may translate in the digital public sphere (Papacharissi, 2009). Digital technology can be empowering or disempowering depending on its use, what devices are accessible and what networks one belongs to. Papacharissi (2009) notes how different social networks reflect the values and membership of different socioeconomic groups, thus reproducing hierarchical power relationships. The diffusion of basic digital literacy skills enables consumer access and basic communication, running the risk of exposing people in the Fourth World to commercial exploitation through technology. The shift of software production to developing countries is limited to elites in such countries, possibly furthering domestic digital divides (Chen and Wellman, 2004). While digital skills, ranging from literacy to programming, can be learnt, digital proficiency can only be acquired. Interventions aimed at bridging the second level digital divide should consider a holistic approach to the development of social and cultural capital as well as cognitive skills.

Digitality acquisition and learning The pervasiveness of ICT across divides ensures constant exposure, which can be recognised as a prerequisite and enabling factor to gain digital proficiency, as is the case with a second language. Krashen (1981) goes as far as to say that meaningful and comprehensible input is all that is required in order to gain proficiency in a language. He foregrounds acquisition, a subconscious process common to one’s first and second language, as opposed to learning, i.e. the explicit

“The language metaphor” 81 and conscious effort to gain proficiency. In terms of the discussion on the digital divide, Krashen’s input hypothesis has three intriguing implications. First of all, people in the First and in the Fourth World acquire digital proficiency differently. A person’s first language (and any other language he or she knows) affects the acquisition of the second language. This is known as language transfer and can be either positive, i.e. supportive, or negative, i.e. a hindrance. People who belong to the First World live in media-rich environments and build on their experience with print, recordings, cinema, radio and TV to gain epistemological access to ICT. This resembles the positive language transfers which French speakers employ when learning English (Bialystok, 2008). The situation is very different in contexts where literacy levels as well as exposure to traditional media are low. Many people in the Fourth World had little or no time to familiarise themselves with older media before acquiring new ones. The widespread use of the Internet by such people does not necessarily equate with digital proficiency. Second, people in the Fourth World need to become producers. The theory of comprehensible output critiques the input hypothesis and recognises the important role of interaction and meaningful production (Swain, 2000). Bourdieu (1977) identifies the ability to generate speech as the basis for linguistic competence as well as linguistic capital. Evidence suggests that people in the developing world, despite having the tools to be producers and contributors, play a passive role as consumers of digital technology (Bird, 2011). The production and sharing of digital content is on the rise thanks to the popularity of social networks, but software production remains firmly concentrated in the first world’s camp (Kogut and Metiu, 2001) Through cultural as well as technological dependence, the First World still exerts a hegemonic influence on the dynamics of digitality in the Fourth World by defining and imposing its own protocols of communication (see Castells, 2010). This could be attributed to the fact that mobile devices, which shape the Internet experience of many users in the Fourth World, are primarily consumption devices (Campbell, 2008). Third, age plays a central role. Krashen’s input hypothesis was based on the observation of first language acquisition by children (1973). According to the critical age hypothesis (see Pinker, 1994), up to puberty one has a comparatively large number of synapses in their brain to support first language acquisition. Once that window is closed, the best way to learn a language is through explicit instruction (Ellis, 2006). This is not to say one cannot learn a language at an old age simply by being exposed to it. It means this is not the most effective way. This consideration provides a strong argument for the teaching of digital literacy in the Fourth World to scaffold epistemological access. Many ICT-for-development initiatives criticised as “technology dump” (Volsoo, 2006; Reijswoud et al., 2005) seem to be based on the assumption that once people gain physical access to the Internet, online participation follows. Goldstuck (2010) calculates that this gap, which he terms digital participation curve, takes approximately five years. Among those who are online, Hargittai (2002) observes the emergence of a second level digital divide along dimensions such as differences in the devices used, autonomy and independence, available social support, types of use and level of skills. With

82  Lorenzo Dalvit respect to the latter two dimensions, research abounds on how adult members of marginalised communities adopt technology and adapt it to their daily life. This can be scaffolded through explicit teaching.

The “Creolisation” hypothesis I discussed above how digitality could be seen as emerging phylogenetically from previous media, similarly to a Creole in linguistic terms. Creolisation refers to the process whereby a pidgin becomes a community’s native language (Bolland, 1998). In general, pidgins emerge where migrants from different language communities meet and need to communicate. Children who grow up in such communities adopt pidgin as their mother tongue and in the process transform it into a native language. This entails the establishment of a richer and more complex grammar, standard vocabulary, different registers, etc. Children who grow up in a technology-rich environment and interact with ICT from an early age acquire it as a native language. In much the same way that a native speaker is more confident, capable of generating and innovating his or her language and has an implicit understanding of grammar that allows him or her to infer grammatical rules, so digital natives have the ability to relate to ICT in an intuitive and confident manner, quite different from the trial and error approach of digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001). In the First World, the recent wave of innovations in services was spear-headed by relatively young entrepreneurs who grew up in a digital environment. In terms of the critical age hypothesis, one could consider them as having acquired digitality as a first language. Like linguistic innovations, digital innovations diffused within a community of digitally proficient people who contributed to their growth. In the Fourth World, experience with traditional media was rarer to start with, and the penetration of new media, though impressive, is relatively recent. This means the first cohort of digital natives is emerging now and has access to relatively limited social capital in terms of people who can provide IT support, etc. (Attewell, 2001). The comparatively young demographic of the developing world points towards the possible overtake of the West by countries such as India, China or South Africa, which boast impressive increases in ICT penetration as well as population growth (Inmobi, 2014).

Conclusion This chapter explores the implications of the language metaphor for power dynamics related to the digital divide. Multiple divides exist and are captured by the concept of a Fourth World. Through mobile phones, a rapidly increasing number of people in the Fourth World are gaining physical access to ICT in general and the Internet in particular. Epistemological access is as important as physical access and is influenced by factors such as level of literacy, education and proficiency in the languages used in the ICT domain. The continuum between the two extremes (no access at all and full access) can be understood in terms of digital proficiency, i.e. the progressive ability to use ICT appropriately across contexts. The language

“The language metaphor” 83 metaphor can also be applied to the distinction between digital natives and immigrants. As an increasing portion of the population, especially in developing countries, becomes digitally proficient at an early age, ICT becomes more and more pervasive and ubiquitous. While this is often considered a positive thing, it can also entrench existing power dynamics or establish new ones. Digitality can be compared to a hegemonic language such as English. Its association with positive meanings entrenches its dominant role by ensuring its acceptance also among those who are excluded or disempowered by it. Such meanings can be intrinsic (e.g. communicative or cognitive advantages of using ICT), extrinsic (e.g. access to material or immaterial resources) and functional (i.e. instrumental or symbolic value). Providing access to such a powerful language through education may reinforce its dominant role and requires a critical approach. The pervasiveness of ICT ensures exposure to it, a precondition and enabling factor to become digitally proficient. However, input by itself is not sufficient to explain digital acquisition. People in the First World could rely on their familiarity with traditional media. Cultural closeness with Western epistemologies and metaphors also supports epistemological access for such users as opposed to those in the Fourth World. This enables the former to generate meaningful output and become producers, while relegating the latter largely to the role of passive consumers. Not all uses of technology have equal power and status. Context-specific forms of digitality can be considered different registers of the same language. As such, they have different status and serve their users differently. Within digitality one can identify different registers ranging from basic digital literacy to advanced programming languages. Epistemological access to powerful varieties and registers is often associated with higher social and cultural capital. Teaching and learning of digitality as a language should take this into account. One can see the emergence of different digital varieties as Creoles based on existing media. In the West, a generation of people who were exposed to ICT at a young age have led innovation in the field. As digital natives come to age in many parts of the developing world, some of which have a comparatively young demographic, this could shift global power relationships in the near future.

Acknowledgements This work was made possible thanks to the support of the South African National Research Foundation through its Human and Social Dynamics in Development and Incentive Funding for Rated Researchers initiatives.

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7 Theorizing digital divides through the lens of the social construction of technology and social shaping of technology Susan B. Kretchmer Introduction Over the past twenty-plus years since the recognition of the digital divide through social scientific research, in the search for equity in the digital age, academic scholarship has played a key role in the public discourse on the issues of the digital divide as well as in the decision-making by policymakers and practitioners as they work to craft solutions to this pressing societal concern. Yet, despite all that we do know so far, there is a very large gap in our understanding of digital divides, what it means to have and provide access and participation for a diverse population, and how to create digital and social equality for all in our digital, networked society. And, that lack of understanding, in turn, impedes our ability to design policy and practice that matches reality, truly addresses needs, and breaks down barriers. Following a summary description of the two theories, through the consideration of data that has perpetually confounded the US government, this chapter explores the untapped explanatory potential of the Social Construction of Technology and Social Shaping of Technology theories in developing new perspectives and broadening and deepening understandings of the rise and persistence of digital divides. As such, this chapter illustrates the conceptual power of theorizing digital divides in novel and intriguing ways to explicate digital social inequalities.

The theory of the social construction of technology (SCOT) The theory of the social construction of technology (Pinch & Bijker, 1984; Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987; Bijker, 1995) views technology and its use as inextricably intertwined with its social context. Rather than technology driving human action as technological determinism (e.g., McLuhan, 1964) suggests, SCOT maintains that human action shapes technology. Further, the acceptance or rejection of a technology is a function of the social world; how a technology is defined, why it is defined that way, and what groups and stakeholders are included and excluded from participation in creating that definition dictate the success or failure of a technology. The SCOT proposes the concept of interpretative flexibility, which refers to the idea that technologies are culturally designed by producers as well as culturally interpreted by users. Various relevant social groups hold divergent social,

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 89 cultural, economic, and political interests and value judgments and, thus, assign differing priorities in the design and construction of technologies and associate differing meanings to the same technological object. SCOT also notes the relationship between the actual content of a technology and the wider sociopolitical milieu; the sociocultural and political position of a social group shapes its norms and values, which in turn influences the meanings that group attaches to a technology. These meanings coalesce, in part, as users decide whether or not and in what ways a technology is compatible with their skills, understandings, and habitual practices (Miles, 1990; Thomas & Miles, 1990). The alternative interpretations of the design and use of technology by various social groups are often in conflict and generate problems that must be solved. And, because technologies are continuously redesigned as well as introduced into new contexts, they are repeatedly reinterpreted (Fulk, 1993). Moreover, the theory of the SCOT holds that, over time, through closure mechanisms, interpretative design, and meaning, flexibility distills to a dominant consensus and stabilization about the design, purpose, meanings, and “success” or “failure” of the technology. Rhetorical closure occurs when relevant social groups believe all problems have been solved; this perception arises whether or not the problems really have been solved, and advertising can play an important role in this process, especially in the relation between the social group of producers and various groups of users. Another closure mechanism to stabilize conflicts is the redefinition of the problem so that the technology as it currently exists represents the solution. Closure, however, is not permanent because, as new social groups form, interpretative flexibility is reintroduced and gives rise to new conflicts and problems that must be solved. As such, while not a focus of the SCOT, it should be noted that the exercise of power is involved as designs and meanings are fixed and, thus, for a time, close off the potential for other or new conceptions. Likewise, groups involved in the design and use of technology impact the determination of its construction and meanings while those who do not participate are excluded from the power structure and have designs and meanings dictated for them so new power relationships may be created or existing societal power asymmetry may be reproduced. Consequently, there is interpretative flexibility in both the design choices made in the development of computers and other devices and the Internet as well as in the meanings users attribute to those technologies. That reality plus the formation of a dominant consensus and stabilization of the technologies has profound implications for understanding the growth and endurance of digital divides.

The theory of the social shaping of technology (SST) The theory of the social shaping of technology (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Williams & Edge, 1996) is a companion to the ideas of the SCOT theory and explores the content of technology and the processes involved in innovation. Within the SST framework, technology is socially shaped and reciprocally shapes

90  Susan B. Kretchmer individuals, groups, and society. As well, technology creates an environment that enables and/or constrains its users. A central concept of the SST is that there are choices—conscious and unconscious—inherent in both the design of technologies and systems and in the paths taken in programs of innovation. The different possibilities available, in turn, have the potential to lead to divergent technological outcomes and differing implications for particular social groups and society as a whole. SST focuses on the impact of the social and technological context of development that shapes these innovation choices, the cultural, organizational, institutional, economic, and political factors as well as the values and interests that guide the design and implementation of technology, and the rationale supporting the chosen paths. As such, like the SCOT theory, the SST theory opposes the linear model of innovation and technological determinism, which posits that technology and its predetermined path of development, unaffected by humans, defines the nature of a society, its social structure and cultural values, and drives all human activity. In contrast, SST explores the material consequences of different technical choices and the interplay of influence between technology and society in a process of mutual shaping. The SST theory argues that there is a mutual relationship between technology and its social context. SST advocates for the inclusion within the definition of a technology of the social context within which it emerges and becomes embedded. Thus, rather than technology being “equipment” alone, it embodies all the institutions and social arrangements within which the adoption, configuration, and use of that technology takes place, including the knowledge, experience, and learning process employed in the creation and diffusion of the technology. And, technologies in use interact with their environments to generate new forms of technology as well as new environments. Consequently, the development, implementation, and integration of computers and other devices and the Internet has been driven by the prevailing social context and mainstream cultural ideologies and, like the SCOT, has profound implications for understanding the rise and persistence of digital divides.

The perpetual conundrums in the US According to the most recent data, 32 percent of US civilians, nearly 100 million Americans, do not use the Internet at home (US Census Bureau, 2015). While over time the digital divide has narrowed, a very significant gap endures with historical variations across demographics such as race and ethnicity, age, income, education, disability status, and urban-rural location (File, 2013). Kretchmer (Kretchmer, Pierce, & Robinson, 2015) analyzed data on the US digital divide from 2000–2011. Her findings have noteworthy and serious implications for the future as they dramatically demonstrate that in real terms, if the US continues its current trajectory—assuming the initiatives to bridge the divides can maintain their existing rates of success, which may not be possible if they reach resistant portions of the gaps—it will take from decades to hundreds of

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 91 years, if ever, to bring disadvantaged groups into equality in the digital age. For instance, at the present rate, it will take ten to sixteen years for Blacks, Hispanics, those with high school degrees, households with incomes of $20,000–24,999 and $25,000–34,999, and the non-employed to reach parity in Internet use with their more advantaged counterparts. But, it will require two to three decades for those households with incomes under $15,000 and $15,000–19,999, almost sixty-seven years for rural residents, and more than 294 years for those with less than a high school education to attain levels of Internet use equivalent to more privileged groups. And, individuals with disabilities may never overcome the divide and may even find increasing inequality in the future. This situation points to the need to understand why certain divides are so intractable and, based on that knowledge, what improvements must be made in policy and practice that seeks to foster digital inclusion. This chapter argues that research informed by the SCOT and SST theories is the key to understanding these crucial issues. Before exploring the untapped explanatory potential of the two theories, we will consider in more detail specific data that has perpetually confounded the US government about three digital divides—the race and ethnicity divide, the urban-rural divide, and the disability divide; this data is central to the understandings that must be achieved in order to accurately combat digital inequality in the US.

The race and ethnicity divide Blacks’ and Hispanics’ use of the Internet has always lagged appreciably behind that of Whites and Asian Americans. And, over the past seventeen years, Asians have led Whites in household Internet use by an average of 7.79 percentage points. Also over that seventeen-year period from 1998 to 2015, the disparity between household Internet use for White non-Hispanics and both Blacks and Hispanics decreased by only 3.8 and 6.8 percentage points respectively, leaving a corresponding 14.8 and 10.5 percent difference remaining (US Census Bureau). Likewise, a large divide continues to exist with 95.3 percent of Asians and 90.1 percent of non-Hispanic Whites compared to only 81.9 percent of Blacks and 84.3 percent of Hispanics reporting living in homes with at least one computer (File & Ryan, 2014). By utilizing regression analysis, we learn that differences in demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic characteristics explain only a small portion of the gaps in adoption between White as opposed to Black and Hispanic households (ESA & NTIA, 2011). After controlling for socioeconomic and geographic differences, the percentage point broadband adoption gap between Asians and Whites disappears. In contrast, 69 percent of the broadband adoption gap between White and Black households and 73 percent of the gap between White and Hispanic households persists even after accounting for socioeconomic and geographic factors; the original White-Black gap of sixteen percentage points is reduced to eleven points, and the original White-Hispanic gap of fifteen percentage points is reduced to eleven points. Further, while overall, computer owners displayed much

92  Susan B. Kretchmer less disparate broadband adoption rates across race and ethnicity with a four percentage point gap for Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics, controlling for demographic and geographic characteristics again erases the Asian and White difference, but both the White-Black and White-Hispanic gaps are still 75 percent unexplained at three percentage points each. The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently used their 2013 dataset to model individual-level Internet use to try to explain at least part of the remaining adoption gap among Hispanics (Morris, 2015). They found that adding indicators of language barriers and non-citizenship, both negative indicators of Internet use, to the model reduced but did not eliminate the estimated gap attributed to being Hispanic. While controlling for demographic factors, Hispanics were slightly more than ten percentage points less likely than White non-Hispanics to use the Internet. When NTIA added citizenship status to the model, the estimated gap in Internet use between Hispanics and White nonHispanics dropped to seven percentage points. And, after controlling for language barriers as well as citizenship, the gap between the two groups dropped to six percentage points. Adding these two factors that are part of Hispanics’ social context was an astute hypothesis, but again, this model does not eliminate the gap entirely; approximately 60 percent of the gap continues to be unexplained. Thus, there is obviously more that we need to understand to explain why Hispanics have historically faced an especially large digital divide.

The urban-rural divide Similarly, the digital divide between rural and urban residents has persisted as well. Over the seventeen-year period from 1998 to 2015, the disparity between household Internet use for rural as opposed to urban dwellers decreased by only one percentage point, leaving a corresponding 10.2 percent difference remaining (US Census Bureau). Further, 85.1 percent of urban households have a computer, while only 76.5 percent of rural households do (File & Ryan, 2014). By utilizing regression analysis, just like with race and ethnicity, we learn that differences in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics explain only a small portion of the gaps in adoption between urban as opposed to rural households (ESA & NTIA, 2011). After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic differences, 39 percent of the broadband adoption gap between urban and rural households persists; the original urban-rural gap of thirteen percentage points is reduced to five points. Plus, while overall, computer users displayed less disparate broadband adoption rates across urban and rural residency with an eight-percentage point gap, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors again still leaves the urban-rural gap 63 percent unexplained at five points.

The disability divide Exhibiting an analogous but more severe pattern than that of the race and ethnicity and urban-rural divides, the disability divide has consistently continued

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 93 unabated. As Kretchmer’s analysis reveals, over the eleven-year period from 2000 to 2011, the disparity between Internet use from any location by individuals with no disability and those with a disability increased (rather than decreased as policy and practice intended) by one percentage point (Kretchmer, Pierce, & Robinson, 2015). In 2015 (US Census Bureau), there was a 23.9 percentage point gap between Internet use at home by 73.2 percent of individuals with no disability compared to 49.3 percent of those with a disability. In addition, while 90.4 percent of individuals with no disability report living in homes with at least one computer, only 73.9 percent of those with a disability do (File & Ryan, 2014). By utilizing regression analysis, we learn that differences in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and geography explain only a portion of the gaps in adoption between householders with no disability as opposed to those with a disability (ESA & NTIA, 2011). After controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic differences, 21 percent of the broadband adoption gap between householders with no disability and householders with a disability persists; the original disability-no disability gap of twenty-nine percentage points is reduced to six points. Further, while overall, computer users displayed much less disparate broadband adoption rates across disability status with a ten-percentage point gap, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors and geography again still leaves the disability divide 30 percent unexplained at three points. Thus, race and ethnicity, rural residency, and disability status are independently associated with technology usage patterns. And, these issues are ongoing and continually perplex the US government agencies charged with developing a clear understanding of digital divides and the best ways to address them. While ESA and NTIA have not published an updated version of the exact regression model described above using more recent datasets, they have internally periodically run the same basic model used in their 2011 report on newer datasets to see whether the results are similar, and they consistently are. But, why? What explains these divides and enduring gaps that are so impervious to current policy and practice initiatives and the ever-growing mainstream cultural assumption that computers and the Internet are essential for life in the digital age?

Explicating the conundrum through the social construction of technology and social shaping of technology theories Most research on computer and Internet adoption and utilization has investigated who uses these technologies, for what types of activities, the skills and motivations involved, and how structural or social position factors (e.g., education, income, etc.) affect usage. This work provides some interesting insights, including that there are very divergent Internet usage patterns between Blacks and Whites (Smith, 2010; Krogstad, 2015; Smith, 2014), Hispanics and Whites (Brown et al., 2016; Livingston, 2011; Lopez, Gonzalez-Barrera, & Patten, 2013), urban and rural residents (Rainie, Reddy, & Bell, 2004), and users with disabilities and those without disabilities (Rainie, Madden, Boyce, Lenhart, Horrigan, & Allen, 2003). However, rarely does this research include a thorough investigation

94  Susan B. Kretchmer into the theoretical underpinnings of what drives technology use and the disparities revealed (Kretchmer & Carveth, 2001). As a result, digital divide researchers, policymakers, and practitioners know something about the functional role that computers and the Internet play in people’s lives, but little about the interplay of influence between society, culture, and the development, deployment, appropriation, integration, and perceptions of these technologies and how people and groups create meaning about their use. Moreover, little research has employed qualitative methods, such as ethnography, which are particularly illuminating, to probe these issues. Despite the import of the perspective, to date only a small amount of work has been done by various scholars around the world on the digital divide and the SCOT and SST theories (e.g., Dixon et al, 2014; Fuentes-Bautista, Straubhaar, & Spence, 2003). And, the application of the SCOT and SST is almost entirely unexplored as a new perspective to specifically broaden and deepen understandings of the confounding rise and endurance of the race and ethnicity, urban-rural, and disability US digital divides. Since conducting empirical research to illustrate this connection is beyond the scope of this chapter, the aim here is to demonstrate, through what research is already available, some of the ways in which these US divides can be explicated through the use of the SCOT and SST theories and, thus, to argue for the value and necessity of this approach for future research on digital divides worldwide. When viewed through the lens of the SCOT and SST theories, the broadband adoption gap based on race and ethnicity that persists even after accounting for demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors can be explained by analyzing the interpretations of computers and other devices and the Internet that prevail among Blacks and Hispanics, which would be expected to be different from those of Whites. And, the fact that controlling for socioeconomic and geographic differences eliminates the broadband adoption gap between Asians and Whites is commensurate with this approach given that Asian Americans enjoy high levels of educational and economic success and social assimilation, including living in mixed neighborhoods and marrying across racial lines, and most feel they get along well with Whites and are not targets of racial discrimination or culturally imposed “otherness” (Pew Research Center, 2012). In fact, Asian Americans are more than a “model minority,” as they have surpassed Whites in a myriad of measures used to define a model American (Kohli, 2015). Thus, Asian and White Americans’ interpretations of computers and other devices and the Internet would be expected to be in tandem. In contrast, evidence suggests that Blacks’ and Hispanics’ interpretations of computers and other devices and the Internet differ from those of Whites. Kretchmer and Carveth (2001) uniquely proposed and demonstrated the value of applying the SCOT to explain the digital divide for Blacks. Their study shows that while it is not clear that Blacks see cyberspace as white, Blacks did view cyberspace as lacking color, which is a definite negative for them. They also found that while Blacks may not feel completely excluded from cyberspace, they may not feel completely included either. And, Kretchmer and Carveth concluded that

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 95 Internet content explicitly addressed to Blacks may be well-received as a matter of a mainstream versus an alternative voice where Blacks, as opposed to Whites, see value in the presence on the Internet of a different, unusual perspective. Taking this idea further, suggesting the SST perspective, Torres (2016) notes, We live in a de facto media apartheid system that disenfranchises people of color—preventing us from taking part in or having any significant control over the construction and distribution of our own narratives. Corporate media gatekeepers perpetuate this structural and institutional racism in their news coverage and entertainment programming. Whereas there is resistance to mainstream interpretations, it is also clear that when a technology is seen as a means to accomplish culturally motivated daily goals, it is used aggressively by Blacks. In Graham and Choi’s work (2016), Blacks have higher rates than Whites of cell phone calling, but not Internet usage, because cell phone calling is considered by Blacks to be a means to fulfill cultural attitudes, beliefs, meanings, and expectations of communicating with family and friends to maintain strong kin-networks. Similarly, Leonardi (2003) discovered that Hispanics position the perceived usefulness of cell phones, computers, and the Internet based on their cultural values of good communication. Within Hispanic culture, consistent, close interpersonal contact is highly valued. Cell phones are viewed by Hispanics as an efficient and effective means of interpersonal communication in everyday life. But, as opposed to mainstream cultural assumptions, computers and the Internet are seen by Hispanics as impeding and damaging to the communication required for good social relationships. Hispanics believe the Internet is a tool to obtain information and a place for entertainment, not a medium of communication, that its use is isolating, and that it inhibits participation and active membership in the family and other important groups. Indeed, Durham (1989) suggests that the one-to-one communication nature of some new media technologies may be antithetical to cultures that prize turn-taking and social participation. In addition, research reveals that, rather than conforming to online mainstream norms, Blacks express and negotiate their particular ethnic identity and culture on the Internet (e.g., see Kvasny, Payton, & Hales, 2010 about bloggers in the “Blackosphere” and Manjoo, 2010 about how young Blacks, who are unusually tightly clustered on the Twitter network, perform Black culture online). Further, Murillo’s research (2015) proves the importance of culturally relevant website content, regardless of language, to engage and influence Hispanics online. Strategies identified that make online content culturally relevant embrace topics Hispanics care about or are unique to the Hispanic experience (e.g., family, food, traditions, holidays); cultural sensibilities; visual cues that reflect Hispanic culture in respectful, identifiable ways; bilingual content; and culturally appealing people, entertainment, and music. Thus, it is evident that social uses, perceptions, and a proper fit with cultural practices are essential for technology adoption and diffusion within particular

96  Susan B. Kretchmer sociocultural groups like Blacks and Hispanics. To demonstrate this, drawing on fifteen years of ethnographic fieldwork with Blacks living in the largely rural Midwest and Mexican immigrants living in a wealthy Mountain West city, Pierce (2015) provides a micro-level window into the world of these marginalized groups in order to understand the impact of the digital divide for them, their motivations to use computers and the Internet, their perceptions of its relevance to them and their lives, and the choices and value judgments they must make on a daily basis, much of which defies mainstream assumptions about these populations (Kretchmer, 2015). Paralleling the unique social constructions and social shaping of computer and other device and Internet technology within the Black and Hispanic communities, rural culture also presents distinct paradigms. It is well-known that rural America has its own discrete culture and viewpoints. While American mainstream culture pervades rural areas, primarily through mass media, there are characteristically rural values, customs, and traditions, such as self-reliance, independence, individualism, isolation, emphasis on family, lack of privacy and anonymity, conservative attitudes, distrust of outsiders, religion, work orientation, conventional behavioral expectations, traditional gender and generational role expectations, respect for authority, self-abnegation, down-to-earth and practical mentality, careful and considered ways of approaching life, and fatalism (Slama, 2004). As well, ruralites often feel minimized and looked down upon by those not in rural areas and the mainstream culture those elites have created and, thus, have a kind of antagonism toward urbanites and liberals (The American Prospect, 2011). This distinctive culture translates into a set of perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about the Internet and its use in rural lives. For instance, Larson (2007) found that women are seen as the primary holders of Internet knowledge in rural communities; rural men view the Internet as a communication medium, thus best suited for women, analogous to traditional gender roles in the offline world. In addition, Larson’s study shows that for ruralites who value personal background knowledge and face-to-face communication, online relationships are stigmatized as ruralites generally distrust meeting new people online. Instead, ruralites perceive the Internet as a place to communicate with people with whom they share a pre-existing strong connection. Moreover, through the analysis of data from a popular social network site, Gilbert, Karahalios, and Sandvig’s work (2010) reveals that rural users articulate far fewer friends online than urban users, those friends live much closer to home, ruralites prefer their profiles set to private, and ruralites would benefit from social media designs in line with their cultural sensibilities that would allow for incremental trust building rather than the usual binary friend-or-not model. The same recognition of a unique culture and, thus, social construction and social shaping of technology is also necessary to understand the disability digital divide. Although the disability divide is the largest and most intractable gap, it is one of the least studied and what research there is in the area usually focuses on issues of assistive technologies, Web accessibility, and legal aspects (e.g., First Monday, 2015; Jaeger, 2012), but not the interpretations of the technologies by disabled users and

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 97 non-users and the social shaping of these technologies as it impacts the disabled. Goggin and Newell’s (2003) notable contribution on this crucial nexus explores how disability shapes and is shaped by new media and communication technologies, which are inherently political, tied to the particular cultural values of those in power, exclude the knowledge and life experiences of users, and actually build in and construct disability. They advocate for technologies that embrace rather than attempt to erase disability and for the disabled to be brought in to the development and production process alongside of the usually abled creators. Likewise, Moser (2006) argues that as technologies designed and deployed to compensate for disabilities work to offer the disabled the same access as abled users, they instead (re) produce the abled-disabled dichotomy they were supposed to reverse.

Implications of the SCOT and SST theories for understanding digital divides and directions for future research Taken together, as we have seen, all of this research begins to paint an increasingly clear picture that points to the centrality of social construction and social shaping in understanding gaps in adoption and use of computers and other devices and the Internet. Often it is implied that those technologies remove race and ethnicity, location, and disability from human interaction, or at least make them irrelevant, but in fact, all the divides in the real world are replicated in digital technology. The sociocultural and political position of a social group shapes its norms and values, which in turn influences the meanings that group attaches to a technology, which is not fundamentally neutral but rather socially shaped by the social context within which it emerges and becomes embedded. This chapter argues that it is these concepts that hold the key to advancing understandings of all digital divides, not just the three selected for discussion here. And yet, these crucial concepts are almost entirely absent from existing work on digital inequalities (e.g., see the literature review in Fuchs, 2009, pp. 45, 48). Thus, we must begin thinking about digital divides in new and meaningfully different ways as we conceive and pursue a research agenda for the future. Digital inequalities are far more complex than has been envisioned to date. For example, traditional frameworks of digital exclusion hold that economic, social, institutional, political, and educational disadvantages are linked to lower degrees of motivation, material access, skills, and usage (van Dijk, 2005). But, there is no consideration of the interplay of influence between society, culture, and the development, deployment, appropriation, integration, and perceptions of digital technologies, and how people and groups create meaning about their use. In contrast, the SCOT and SST theories demand that future research investigate these essential components of digital divides at every level—from access to technology, to skills and usage patterns, to the outcomes achieved from Internet use—and in every aspect of the multi-layered, multi-faceted, interconnected interaction of impacts that comprise digital inequalities. Research is needed that, informed by the SCOT and SST approach, unpacks the meaning of computer and other device and Internet adoption, digital literacy,

98  Susan B. Kretchmer and digital skills in the social context of individuals with low incomes and educational attainment, low literacy, low social status, racial/ethnic minorities, older adults, rural residents, those with disabilities, and other marginalized populations plagued by enduring digital inequality so that digital inclusion efforts can be properly designed and executed. How do these various populations uniquely construct their information environments? What do they do with their information environments and for what purposes? How do they view and use devices and the Internet? The answers to these questions and more that can be revealed by research will demonstrate how the structures created reflect the users’ resources, values and perspective, and what they are trying to accomplish with the technology as a result. Further, when survey respondents say that computers and other devices and the Internet are not relevant, it may well be that they really are not relevant for those individuals, but also that relevance is a far more nuanced phenomenon than previous research has described. In the majority, research, policy, and practice assume that all that is required is to overcome misperceptions that the Internet lacks relevance (i.e., that non-users simply do not understand and need to be educated on the benefits of computer and other devices and Internet use) when instead those assumptions must be unpacked and tested for validity through research that uncovers the true meaning of “relevance” as defined by marginalized populations, not by out-group researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. The same is the case for the other standard multiple-choice options researchers offer to respondents as reasons for non-use, namely “interest,” “want,” “need,” and “cost.” As well, there is a pervasive presumption that there are “normal” uses and purposes of uses of computers and other devices and the Internet as well as one authoritative kind of digital literacy and skills to which everyone should and would want to aspire. However, as SCOT and SST show, there is no one way of making use of computers and other devices and the Internet; rather, their use and the digital literacy and skills employed in the process can only be understood in the social context of engagement, in what relevance they gain, interest they spark, sense of wanting and needing they inspire, value and cost-effectiveness they supply, and purposes they serve as defined by the user. As such, research is vital to examine this process to increase understanding of the actual reasons for use and non-use within various population groups, especially among segments that have traditionally not used or under-utilized computers and other devices and the Internet. As SCOT and SST teach us, to chart a meaningful path forward to bridge the digital divide, we need to ask and have research answer the questions: What is it about certain social groups’ interpretations of computers and other devices and the Internet that fuels their use and non-use of the technologies? And, what is missing or antithetical to those social groups in the mainstream ideologies and assumptions about the design, deployment, integration, content, and use in everyday life of these technologies? The understandings gained through the lens of the SCOT and SST, in turn, will suggest the importance of, for instance, reconstructing the quantity and quality of diverse cultural content online and reshaping digital literacy and digital skills efforts to fit a wide variety of cultural forms and styles.

The social construction and shaping of digital divides 99

Conclusion In summary, following a description of the two theories and consideration of data that has perpetually confounded the US government, we have explored substantial evidence of the compelling insights and untapped potential of the SCOT and SST theories to illuminate the unexplained, and heretofore seemingly unexplainable, rise and persistence of the US race and ethnicity, urban-rural, and disability digital divides. By generating new perspectives and broader and deeper understandings, we see the conceptual power of theorizing digital divides in novel and intriguing ways to explicate digital social inequalities. Indeed, to conquer enduring gaps, as the SCOT and SST theories urge, we must thoroughly investigate the crucial aspects of the divides as social artifacts and the full range of issues implicated by the social context, the symbolic role and meanings of technology with its built-in cultural biases that limit its use, and the diverse shared and discrete cultures that impact our wired world and the differences in power associated with them. Moreover, we must critically interrogate what has become authoritative discourse about the digital divide within mainstream cultural and ideological contexts where over-generalizations and seemingly unchallengeable assumptions translate into frameworks for knowledge production through research and action in policy and practice. Digital inclusion research, policy, and practice are not simple, objective, or value-neutral propositions (Kretchmer, 2015). All too often, they are subjectively enacted and translated into a majority population showing kindness, generosity, and concern for the welfare and happiness of minority groups as they take on the values, norms, patterns, identity, and lifeways of the dominant culture in order to become totally integrated. Yet, despite the good intentions, the expectations and the reality of digital inclusion as currently envisioned and enacted often serve to whitewash rather than honor the complexity, paradigms, and promise of cultural diversity in the digital age and, thus, result in research, policy, and practice that cause perpetual unexplained divides to confound and obstruct progress to meet the needs, hopes, and desires of marginalized populations. Learning from the SCOT and SST theories about the constraints of our current technology arrangements and the mechanisms that drive technology use and explain disparities forces us into dialogue, to look at the digital divide anew, and to create new democratized models of social change. Digital social equality is not synonymous with everyone conforming to the mainstream. Rather, the call for true equity in the digital age exhorts us to reframe and infuse technology with diversity at every step in the process from design to development to training and use to research, policy, and practice.

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8 Critical infrastructures, critical geographies Towards a spatial theory of the digital divide John Haffner

Introduction With the rise of the Internet came a particular kind of “politics of optimism”, whereby the Internet was meant to transcend numerous barriers to a tremendous utopian future – one that would be devoid of social inequity (Robins, 1997). To these digital optimists, including the likes of Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte, one such barrier is geographic space and place-based constraints (Perkins & Neumayer, 2011). Critical geographer Doreen Massey (2005) takes to task these digital optimists – and their association of dimensional space as a barrier to be overcome – in her defense of space as always becoming, relational and therefore a conduit for interaction and social production. Massey argues that space is not just some static dimension that diminishes exponentially under the speed of information travel over the Internet. Instead, the Internet engages in actually producing space. Consequently, geography is not overcome, but made more relevant as new technologies are actually crystalizing new spatial arrangements out of the very infrastructures that organize and execute Internet activity (Kitchin & Dodge, 2005). This chapter engages these Internet infrastructures from a critical geography perspective to situate the digital divide, theoretically, as the uneven development of two critical infrastructures of the Internet: one physical and fixed in absolute space and the other coded and digital, rendering entirely new digital space(s). The following will unpack exactly what is meant by the fixed and digital infrastructures of the Internet. In doing so, it will apply a Marxist-postcolonial analysis to explain how the uneven development of the fixed infrastructure constitutes structures of empire that funnel information into a palatable hegemonic culture via digital infrastructure. This collusion of the fixed and digital infrastructure of the Internet socially produces a complex, multifaceted collection of digital divides in actual, relative and digital spaces. This chapter, therefore, situates the digital divide as complex social relations as opposed to its previous introduction as the technological differentiation of those with access to computing technology and those without (US Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 1998). In turn, this chapter will illuminate the spatial dimensions of inequality, transforming the digital divide from a singular

104  John Haffner conception where space is a passive agent, to a hybrid arrangement of relationally defined and constantly emerging spaces online.

Geography, the Internet and the digital divide Before moving towards a critical spatial theory of the digital divide, it is necessary to highlight previous attempts at defining the term in order to level a spatial contribution. Given the use of critical geographic analysis here, this chapter will take to task some of the reductionist approaches that have been applied to the digital divide that explain the division in terms of inequitable access to particular skills or technologies (Fink & Kenny, 2003; Selwyn, 2004; van Dijk, 2006). While some scholars, such as van Deursen and Van Dijk (2015), have contributed a more nuanced understanding of the skills and technology divide by supplementing a multifaceted model compounding the requisite motivation, material, access and usage factors necessary for closing the digital divide, they ultimately fall short of a comprehensive critical theory. While these studies are useful for identifying metrics to measure the presence of a digital divide, further theorizing is needed in order to better understand the digital divide as a social phenomenon. Critical social theory drawing from both Marxist and postcolonial traditions are a useful compendium to such empirical work on the digital divide. These social theories look holistically at the social processes that constitute the very relationships that generate digital inequalities. The social relationships that Marxist and postcolonial scholars critique are those that propagate out of the capitalist mode of production (e.g. class relations to the means of production) and historic and ongoing processes of colonization. These processes of colonization can either be material (the geographic expansion of colonial powers – see Smith, 1984) or discursive (the ideological expansion and normalization of a certain culture, language and knowledge – see Said, 1979). The spatial argument put forth in this chapter, therefore, follows in the tradition of scholars who connect the digital divide to these broader social processes as identified by Marxist and postcolonial scholars (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001; Haffner, 2013; Stevenson, 2009). Stevenson (2009), for instance, problematizes the discursive association of the digital divide with personal responsibility under a neoliberal frame of rugged individualism in favour of a deeper connection to a Marxian analysis of historic class struggles under capitalism. Others situate the global digital divide within a cultural politic that levels a postcolonial critique of the hegemonic appropriation of Internet-based technologies that are concentrated in the global north (Kuzmanić & Jandrić, 2015). These structural interpretations maneuver better within the field of critical geography as they liberate the digital divide from the technological inevitability of spatial closure without broader societal transformation. Alternatively, a technologically deterministic approach reduces the digital divide to an archaic problem area within development discourse that situates the digitally divided on a linear, temporal trajectory to becoming digitally included. This linear, technological movement follows in the vein of modernization theorists that see the advancement

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies 105 of non-western, pre-capitalist societies towards a particular form of capitalistic western hegemony as desirable (Huntington, 1971; Rostow, 1956). To understand the digital divide in this light would be to situate it within a temporal trajectory, and presuming that, given time and the right conditions, digital inequalities will cease to exist without a fundamental transformation of the social relations under capitalism and colonialism. Critical geography, in comparison to the modernization theorists, makes room for these social relations in order to explain social inequalities in a relational (as well as a spatial) manner. Critical geographers have applied this analysis of spatial justice to many formations of social inequality, including equal access to urban spaces (Harvey, 2009; Lefebvre, 2003; Smith, 1987), gender equality (Massey, 1994), racial justice (Gilmore, 2007; McKittrick, 2006; McKittrick & Woods, 2007) and environmental justice (Harvey, 1996). Critical geography’s spatial analysis of social inequalities can likewise be applied to the digital divide in order to help explain digital inequalities. Specifically, critical geography engages in deep analysis of social-spatial arrangements. These arrangements include the built environment (roads, buildings, cities, cables) and the ways in which critical infrastructures are coordinated to execute particular social functions. For example, in the case of digital technology, while the built environment of the Internet has been mobilized to coordinate the global exchange of information, it has also been mobilized by the narrow logics of capital accumulation (McChesney, 2013). A critical geographer would consider this dual role and try and understand its relationship to digital inequalities and how they are manifested in a social-spatial field at varying geographic scales. Geography is also an interesting discipline to analyze the digital divide considering that geographical space is often considered antagonistic to contemporary digital technologies. For example, telecommunications technology – in particular, the Internet – have been used by what Robins terms the “politics of optimism” and its champions, notably Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte, who claim witness to the death of geography. Robins takes particular issue with the politics of optimism’s animosity towards spatial dimensions. He claims that the digital utopia emerging during the nascency of the digital age was one with an “aspiration to transcend our human condition of living and being in dimensional space” (Robins, 1997: 196). Servon (2002), like Robins, defends geography by arguing that the “[I]nternet has not collapsed distance” (p. 225), and that “IT is profoundly rooted in geography” (p. 226). She lifts out the inequalities of Internet infrastructure development between wealthier urban and suburban neighborhoods and poorer rural areas to demonstrate the importance of spatial positioning with regards to connectivity. Markusen (1996) describes this positioning in terms of “sticky spaces” where intense clustering of Internet activity exists, and their erstwhile counterpart “slippery spaces” where Internet activity remains elusive. To Perkins and Neumayer (2011), this phenomenon takes place at a variety of scales, differentiating the global digital divide from national, regional and local divides. This scalar look at the divide recognizes the complexity around the ways in which Internet

106  John Haffner uptake emerges and what preconditions presuppose the adoption of Internet-based technologies. The above examples support the argument that one such important precondition is geographic context. Urban/rural location, uneven development of infrastructure in the global south, urban gentrification, privatization of basic services and more are all important geographic considerations for analyzing the nature of digital inequalities. It is in this light that this chapter’s analysis moves from a simple defense of geography (e.g. Robbins, Servon, Perkins and Neumayer) to a profoundly more critical application of geographic thinking to help explain the persistence of digital inequalities. Graham (2008), for example, uses this very critical application of geographic thinking to the digital divide by proposing a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon, taking into account spatial digital inequalities in both the physical and the digital realms. To Graham, while on the one hand there exists a proximal physical/technological digital divide of access, on the other hand, there also exists dissociative digital divide(s) within cyberspace itself. The multifaceted divides within cyberspace constitute a relational and hybrid dimension of the geography of the digital divide, one that encapsulates a more existential threat of being separated from the entirely new space(s) of cyberspace. To Graham, this relationship between the physical and the digital proposes an “a priori ontology of cyberspace as simultaneously infinite and fixed” (216). Meaning, that space can be produced online while relationally being tied to the fixed space of materiality. The consequences of this fixity are manifest in the reality of multiple cyberspaces with divided and uneven topologies instead of the representation of a singular unique “global village” online. The uneven topologies of the Internet are demonstrated in the rank and order of online spaces and the reconstituted forms of capital and hegemony in online activity. Ultimately, Graham states, and this chapter will show as well, that an understanding of the digital divide needs to be taken within the context of hybrid spaces online, pluralized and relationally constituted within existing physical spatial frameworks. The provision added is that these spatial dimensions are mediated heavily by the uneven geographic development of fixed and digital infrastructures.

A Marxist-postcolonial analysis of the uneven geographic development of Internet infrastructures Marxist and postcolonial frameworks situate the digital divide in relation to power in the form of knowledge and capital. Meaning, digital inequalities can be explained through these frameworks by taking a critical look at the relationships that emerge as a result of the economic, political and social conditions under capitalism and colonialism. A critical geographic approach to this framing of the digital divide would then consider the spatial consequences of the inequalities emergent under colonial and capitalistic social relations. The following analysis uses a Marxist-postcolonial framework to critique capitalism and colonialism and the ways in which these social formations perpetuate the digital divide spatially through the production of absolute (physical) space into relative (social) space,

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies 107 and finally the production of relative space into digital (online) space. This spatial narrative is important and draws from significant traditions in critical geography, namely Lefebvre (1992) and Smith (1984). To help explain this spatial narrative in the context of the digital divide, a Marxist-postcolonial framework will be applied to the uneven development of the fixed and digital infrastructures. A Marxist-postcolonial framework is useful for analyzing the fixed and digital infrastructures of the Internet as this framework critiques the ways in which the social processes behind the development of these infrastructures result in digital inequalities. A Marxist critique of capitalism, for instance, explains how the fixed infrastructure of the Internet develops unevenly geographically, while a postcolonial critique of the digital infrastructure of the Internet identifies mechanisms that produce western cultural hegemony online, resulting in digital inequalities between hegemonic and subaltern voices. Discussing these two critical infrastructures then allows for a narrative development similar to that of the emergence of postcolonial theory itself: Marxian scholarship by way of Gramsci’s (1971) concept of cultural hegemony informing postcolonial scholars, chiefly Spivak and the Subaltern Studies group (Kapoor, 2008). The discussion of fixed infrastructure, and the uneven geographic development thereof, will lean heavily on Marxist concepts to demonstrate the ways in which capital has engaged the use of fixed infrastructure to compress time-space and flex new technologies for productive use by a capitalist ruling class. A Gramscian discussion of the ways in which the digital infrastructure of the Internet facilitates the dominant cultural hegemony of the ruling class through private software and proprietary code will then situate how information online is effectively divided into valuable and value-less information depending on its proximity to the hegemonic apparatus of the Internet’s digital infrastructure. Finally, this dialectical relationship between the fixed and digital infrastructure will reveal the ways in which these infrastructures mediate divided spaces by turning absolute space into inequitable relative space and digital space. Explaining, ultimately, through Spivak that spaces online lack the necessary hybridity, hyper-self-reflection and representation to engage in a speech act with subaltern voices. Fundamentally, then, the digital divide is a divide where capital and hegemony engage critical infrastructure to geographically reconstitute inequality in relative space and digital space alike.

Fixed and digital Internet infrastructures To build a spatial argument around the infrastructure of the Internet, there must be recognition of two levels of geographic representation, operating relationally to each other and mediated by the built infrastructures of both the material and the immaterial spaces of the Internet. In this way, the two geographies of the fixed and digital infrastructure are both material and immaterial as well. First, there is the physical world of absolute space and all of its produced relative spaces and social constructions. The absolute space here is mediated by the physical fixed infrastructure of the Internet. Fixed infrastructure is understood here as the physical technology that enables the Internet to operate. This includes fibre optic

108  John Haffner cables, data centers, satellites, wireless base stations and any of the component hardware used to access the Internet including computers, tablets, smart phones or other personal devices with Internet-enabled technologies. In 2006, United States Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), then chair of the US Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, famously quipped to much derision that the Internet is a “series of tubes” (Hearings on the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006, 2006). Andrew Blum (2013), an architectural journalist, then investigated from a generally ambivalent and uncritical perspective the very physical components of the Internet in a book titled ‘Tubes’. The blowback Senator Stevens experienced demonstrates the difficulties in conceptualizing the Internet as a physical thing. The fixed infrastructure of the Internet, however, captures that very physical spirit. In doing so, it situates the Internet out of the ethereal and into the concrete, allowing for a very material analysis of the ways in which the infrastructure of the Internet develops spatially under the capitalist mode of production. While the fixed infrastructure mediating space is understood in material terms, the emerging digital space mediated by the digital infrastructure of the Internet provides a contemporary and complex immaterial dimension of space. Digital infrastructure includes the various coded software that constitutes the organization, processes, dissemination, framing and display of information online. As this infrastructure is digitally coded, the space that it produces is in turn digital. The ways in which digital infrastructure and fixed infrastructures relationally and dialectically mutually constitute the production of space online and in physicality are legion (Zook & Graham, 2007). A Google map, for instance, is a direct digital representation of absolute geography with relative geotags of information grounded in time and spaces; likewise, local “Wikis”, notably Wikipedia and Wikitravel, are relational digital representations of certain participating knowledges and expertise that are mediated through online discourse (Graham, 2010). What emerges then is a space typology that “becomes shaped by both physical and virtual elements of the palimpsests of place” (ibid.: 426). So, abstracting from absolute space through socially produced relative space to the production of digital space online, the dialectical and relational process between the physical fixed infrastructure and the coded digital infrastructure takes the divisions produced in relation between absolute space and relative space and re-constitutes them in digital space. The uneven geographic development of the digital divide is therefore compounded by this collusion of fixed and digital infrastructure. A postcolonial gaze at this relational process, therefore, illuminates exactly what is happening to constitute the digital divide in the manifold ways seen today.

Fixed infrastructure Fixed infrastructure is understood here as the physical technology that enables the Internet to operate. Therefore, the material unfolding of the Internet is linked to the development patterns of the capitalist mode of production, which constitutes particularly uneven spatial consequences. The material elements of the Internet

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies 109 include, but are not limited to, manufactured iron ore to be used in cabling, synthesized plastic for insulation and cable casings (Al-Lawati, 2015), as well as the smaller component parts of information and communications technologies (ICTs) that require tin for computer parts and soldering, platinum for hard disks and cobalt for battery power (Fuchs, 2014). This does not even include the necessary materials to construct the ancillary infrastructures to organize the fixed infrastructure of the Internet, such as concrete for buildings to house network servers as well as the transportation infrastructures that mobilize major fixed Internet infrastructures, such as roads and railways. This entire infrastructure is built and produced out of what Smith (1984) calls absolute space, effectively our natural environment, and fixed into a socially produced relative space (this process, according to Smith, will be explained below). Ultimately the material ingredients of this infrastructure are derived from land-based resources, manipulated by a physical labour force and constructed and executed in vast industrially organized methods to create a very real and physical footprint of the Internet. As such, the physicality of the fixed Internet has a very spatial representation in absolute space, and therefore is intrinsically tied to the ways in which capitalism develops in unevenly pronounced ways geographically (Smith, 1984). Marxist geographers such as Smith study these very spatial identities of capitalism, and pay particularly close attention to the ways in which the social relations under capitalism, mediated by exchange, actually produce a representative socially produced relative space that mirrors the very uneven development of capitalism itself (Lefebvre, 1992). For an explanation of this process, I look to Smith’s theory (1984: 87) of uneven development, which outlines the historical transition of how the productive mechanisms of capital transformed absolute (natural/physical) space to relative (social/productive) space: In the early period of capitalism, societal expansion and development was simultaneously geographical. Societal expansion was achieved through geographical expansion; towns expanded into urban centers, pre-capitalist states expanded into modern nation states, and the nation states expanded where they could into colonial empires. If the geography of capitalism developed through the production of relative space, then this was accomplished in the beginning through expansion into absolute space. As capitalism expanded globally, given that absolute space is bounded to geographic space, capital could no longer reproduce itself primarily through geographic expansion, hence there is a geographic turn from the production of absolute space to the production of relative space. To Smith, this resulted in a stage of development of the capitalist project where vast quantities of productive capital became immobilized in the form of infrastructure. Particular infrastructure has been important for the spatial movement of capital such as transport and telecommunications infrastructure (Harvey, 1989; Mosco, 2009). The fixed infrastructure of the Internet is part of this immobilized infrastructure that necessitates the production cycle of capital. In order for a global market to function, the means

110  John Haffner of communication and transport must be mobilized to realize the value of goods and services generated in the production process (Marx, 1993a). Individual firms must coordinate massive logistics in the shipping, trade and distribution of goods and services. The activities to coordinate these logistical necessities lean heavily on digital technology to maintain the accumulation process, therefore, the expansion of the capitalist mode of production is directly bounded to the expansion of global telecommunications networks. Capital recruits this fixed Internet infrastructure for its uneven development aims by prioritizing the use of Internet technology to remove spatial barriers for the circulation of capital production. Communication and information technologies benefit capital’s spatial movement by limiting the time by which methods of capital circulation occur. According to Marx, “the more production comes to rest on exchange value, hence on exchange, the more important do the physical conditions of exchange – the means of communication and transport – become for the costs of circulation” (Marx, cited in Harvey, 2006: 377). Harvey (1989) expounds on Marx’s emphasis on transport and communication for the circulation of capital through an analysis of time-space compression. This compression, according to Harvey, is a natural result of the history of capitalism to speed up activity of daily life and the process of the accumulation of capital. A prominent role of Internet infrastructure, therefore, is to complete capital’s desire for the annihilation of space by time (Marx, 1993b), positioning space as very much an antagonist of capital and valorizing the fixed infrastructure of the Internet for its capacity to speed up the production cycle by overcoming spatial barriers. Such an intimate employment of the fixed infrastructure in the capitalist production cycle marries this infrastructure to the uneven development of the social relations under capitalism itself. The unevenness of the fixed infrastructure from the production of absolute space to relative space, therefore, is the first layer of a spatial theory of the digital divide: the uneven production of geographic space under capitalist social relations. Simply put, in order for a geographic area at any scale to have access to fixed Internet infrastructure, it needs to enter into an exchange relationship with owners of the means of production of the fixed Internet infrastructure itself, usually Tier 1 Internet service providers. Because not everybody has the means to engage in this exchange relationship, a digital divide emerges. However, as noted above, there is no singular digital divide. To understand the more hybrid and pluralized nature of the digital divide, one must look to the ways in which our information is engaged in the production cycle of the fixed Internet infrastructure in relative space and whose information is deemed valuable in an entirely new type of space: digital space. In order to do so, this chapter must extend the Marxist framework into a postcolonial analysis and introduce another kind of Internet infrastructure.

Digital infrastructure Digital infrastructure is more abstract than fixed infrastructure, and therefore its impacts on space are somewhat elusive. Digital infrastructure is, simply, computer

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies 111 code; or, more precisely, the source code that gets executed by computers, which according to Berry (2004) is the “necessary code for the operation and control of all technological machinery relying on microprocessors” (66). The result of this operation is the extension of space beyond the fixed infrastructure. Code directs the flow of data and information over the fixed infrastructure. It arranges a certain hierarchy on the Internet. It is a conduit between servers and the cloud. It is the physical representation of a web page. It also mediates the political economy of the Internet as well as online discourse. Code is proprietary, secret and concentrated within the hands of a small number of private companies. Moreover, it is a specific language developed out of western cultural hegemony. In this way the Internet speaks the discourse of power. It materializes information as data and organizes it based on presupposed understandings of “logic”. Information online may be relational and reflexive, but the dominant narrative that emerges is mediated heavily by a specific code that is proprietary, secret and concentrated within the hands of a small number of private companies, experiencing rapid privatization in the form of strict intellectual property policies. Originally, much of this digital infrastructure of the Internet was created collectively under communal and open-source coding platforms (Curran, Fenton, & Freedman, 2012). However, after the US Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into law, much of this coded infrastructure became private intellectual property that required licensing of use (Napoli, 1999). Further evidence of privatization of the digital infrastructure is seen in the very taxonomy of web pages. Google has played an important role in coordinating the taxonomy of online web searches through its proprietary search algorithms, drastically impacting the arrangement of information online, creating a heavily fragmented structure whereby certain information is privileged over others (Curran et al., 2012). At a higher and more visible level, privatization has occurred in the very manner in which domain names and URLs are distributed. The entity that assigns Internet domain names is a California-based private corporation, the Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is sanctioned by the US Government to coordinate and oversee the global domain name system (Mosco, 2009). There is a strong connection between the material spaces of the fixed infrastructure and the immaterial spaces of the coded/digital infrastructure that organizes and represents the digital worlds, resulting in a manifold pattern of differentiated spaces online. This connection completes the cycle of a hybrid digital divide, with divisions in absolute, relative and now digital space demonstrating that “in addition to the geographies of uneven access to contemporary modes of communication, uneven geographies of participation and representation are also evident and in some cases are being amplified rather than alleviated” (Graham, De Sabbata, & Zook, 2015). These uneven geographies in digital space are divided by discourse, language, knowledge and a proximity to what is deemed valuable information under a particular online cultural hegemony. The divided spaces, therefore, are set aside into a cultural other, or as Said famously situated, the Oriental (Said, 1979). Said identifies the method of orientalism as the systematic practice of fixing western imperial epistemologies as the normalized way of knowing (Kapoor,

112  John Haffner 2008). The ways in which this plays out on the Internet are that digital infrastructures appropriate exactly what information is valuable and fits within the normative imperial epistemologies. The politics of development surrounding the digital divide engage in this orientalist binary by placing the digitally divided within the Oriental Other. The compulsion to close the digital divide simply by means of encouraging the adoption of digital technologies in the global south carries the assumption that the global north is the sole occupier of the progression of history. The master discourse surrounding the digital divide, therefore, is a division between modernity (i.e. capitalistic, liberal, western, democratic societies) and the technological “backwardness” of the global south. The digital divide is a discursive trope in and of itself in that it suggests a binary “other”, further progressing the representation that access to the Internet is in fact a normative necessity within contemporary society. If one rejects this narrative of modernity they situate themselves firmly as the digitally divided other. Another postcolonial stalwart, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, has communicated her frustration with the digital optimists’ insistence that the third world aggressively adopt Internet technologies (Sharpe & Spivak, 2003). To Spivak, the Internet is more of a consequential aspect and not a prescription to justice. Spivak critiques the idea of the “Global Village” and the push for developing countries to engage in telecommunications activity for empowerment (Spivak, 1997). Spivak is wary as this strategy is usually coupled with micro-finance development and questions the ulterior motive of networking developing countries with Internet as a push towards financialization. “The idea of the Pax Electronica”, Spivak notes, “coming from the Pax Romana, the Pax Brittanica and the Pax Americana is a very welcome notion when one is not aware of the worm in the rose” (ibid.). The “worm in the rose” here is the problematic mediation of the fixed and digital infrastructure in dividing space, representation, culture and identity into a preferable western hegemonic empire and digitally divided backwards, pre-digital savage other. Engaging with Spivak illuminates the pitfalls of the digital infrastructure of the Internet in that it always mediates and appropriates voices online into the representation that works best within the confines of the digital infrastructure. In her seminal piece, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Spivak begs that very question through the example of the nineteenth century British imperial abolishment of Hindi widow immolation (Spivak, 1988). In doing so, according to Spivak, the British imperialist silenced the widow and denied her as Subaltern, a rightful representation in the matter. Kapoor (2008) adds that this representational relationship obfuscates the role that the British imperialist plays in silencing the Subaltern, rendering that “even as they re-present her [the Subaltern], the British neglect their own complicity in the representational process” (42, italics in original). Digital infrastructure likewise obfuscates its role online. As producers and consumers of information we rarely come into contact with the machinations of digital infrastructure and the ways in which it organizes, categorizes, filters, ranks and orders information online. Andrejevic (2007: 295) points to this obfuscating power of digital infrastructure when he takes to task the growing trend of cloud

Critical infrastructures, critical geographies 113 computing and data encapsulation into what he calls “spaces of digital enclosure”. Within these enclosures, information is differentiated into digital spaces online and coded via hegemonic filtering systems of value. To Andrejevic, the digital infrastructures surveilling of digital space become so ubiquitous within our daily lives that we do not even recognize their mediations. To Spivak and Said, the normalizing of operations of digital technology demonstrates the ultimate aggression of hegemony: the dominance of a particular way of digital operations (such as the ranking of web pages) is assumed to be natural; any other interpretation of how digital technology should function, therefore, is considered unnatural.

Summarizing a spatial theory of the digital divide The narrative of the production of space under the relational and dialectical engagement of the fixed and digital infrastructure follows the socially mediated transformation of absolute space into relative space via the uneven development of fixed infrastructure. The transformation extends from relative space into digital space via the digital infrastructure’s arrangement of information into a perceived natural hegemony and digitally divided spaces of otherwise. Once the fixed infrastructure is in place, the digital infrastructure can be executed to enclose upon the information traveling over the fixed infrastructure. This collusion of the two infrastructures emphasizes a colonizing nature of the Internet whereby two layers of the digital divide dialectically activate each other to persist digital inequalities in both relative and digital spaces (Kuzmanić and Jandrić, 2015). The twofold process executes as such: (1) Fixed infrastructure engages in the built environment (absolute space), securing use of the Internet in socially produced relative spaces. (2) Digital infrastructure funnels information into a digital enclosure, where it can be made productive under culturally hegemonic standards of value resulting in pluralized digital spaces. The digital divide in relative space, mediated by the proximity and access to fixed infrastructure, is therefore compounded by the digital divide in digital space. The digital divide in digital space is therefore predetermined by the dialectical relationship between the fixed and digital infrastructures. Internet users are digitally divided upon arrival into digital space. While this take may offend the digital optimists as generally pessimistic, the spatial theory (unlike the optimists’ theory) is not deterministic. This spatial theory is a relational ontology of the digital divide, whereby society is engaged in the social production of the relative space of the fixed Internet infrastructure and the digital spaces of the digital infrastructure. The theory moved forward in this chapter by way of a Marxist-postcolonial analysis of the digital divide is that digital inequalities are deeply connected to the social processes of capitalism and colonialism. These processes, as outlined in this chapter, have both material and immaterial consequences in the forms of fixed infrastructure of the Internet that function under the material logics of capitalistic development and the digital infrastructure of the Internet that assumes a cultural hegemonic logic of western liberalism. The metanarrative of this chapter, therefore, has been that in order to combat digital inequalities a change in the very social processes behind the

114  John Haffner development, planning, execution and construction of both fixed and digital infrastructures of the Internet is necessary. Essentially a call for democratizing infrastructure at various geographic scales is needed in order to even out the uneven geography of the Internet. This would require redistribution of the ownership of the fixed infrastructure of the Internet as well as a reimagining of the ways in which information and data are organized online. Much like the theoretical underpinnings of both Marxist and postcolonial thinking, there is a philosophy of praxis at play here: that being, that in order to improve digital inequalities, it is necessary to transform the practice of Internet infrastructure planning and development to match a more just philosophy of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial social processes.

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9 A “recognitional perspective” on the twenty-first century’s digital divide Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan

Introduction The following contribution is based on the assumption that the digital divide can be interpreted in terms of social struggles for recognition. To begin with, we will draw a framework of the digital divide in the twenty-first century. Then we will elaborate on the theoretical background of recognition theory and explain its basic assumptions. In the section “Interpreting the digital divide from a perspective of recognition,” we will review recent digital divide studies and cluster them in accordance with the resulting social dimensions. By explaining some of these results on the basis of recognition theory, we will provide a first glimpse of an alternative approach for understanding the digital divide. Finally, we will reflect on the benefits, potential and limitations of our approach.

A framework for the twenty-first century digital divide In its initial definition, the term digital divide distinguishes between users and non-users of information and communication technologies (ICT). Dewan and Riggins (2005) have described the digital divide based on the two-layer approach: the first layer refers to the digital divide based on material access, which requires hardware and connection to the Internet. The second layer can be defined as the digital literacy divide (Dewan & Riggins, 2005). It refers to the skills required to use the technology (hardware, software and connection), e.g., operational Internet skills, formal Internet skills, information Internet skills and strategic Internet skills. Based on that approach, other researchers added various further layers: Van Dijk and Hacker (2003) see a further level of the digital divide between those who do participate and those who do not participate in the use of the Internet. Hargittai and Walejko (2008) describe a gap of willingness between users who want to use the Internet and non-users who do not want to use it. Following Wei, Teo, Chan and Tan (2011), differences in the achieved usage results represent another layer of the digital divide. In the cohort of the digital natives, who have grown up in the twenty-first century with the Internet, the first order digital divide is becoming irrelevant

118  Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan (Hargittai, 2010). In most Western countries, Internet usage is hardly a question of access or skills anymore. Recent studies focus on differences in usage behavior as a second order form of digital divide. According to Brandtzæg (2010), usage behavior “is including both differentiated levels of participation (frequency of use) and content/activity preferences in media usage (forms of use).” Nevertheless, as recent studies confirm that especially marginal groups struggle with access to the Internet (e.g., Brown, 2015; Prestin, Vieux, & Chou, 2015), considering both the first and second order digital divide is still necessary. Thus, we define our framework of the twenty-first century digital divide as including material and cognitive access as the first order digital divide as well as the particular usage behavior as the second order digital divide. Moreover, as for most digital natives engaging with social media is an undeniably popular part of Internet use that is quite different from other Internet applications, focusing the digital divide framework on social media should be useful. While a broad body of literature has emphasized socio-demographics as moderating factors and has provided a detailed understanding of the required skills and an in-depth analysis of usage behavior (e.g., van Dijk & Hacker, 2003; Cho et al., 2003; Nie & Erbring, 2002; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2010), researchers have not treated the consequences of the digital divide as a social phenomenon in great detail. Considering recognition, most studies in this field have elaborated primarily on that issue, e.g., as a psychological category or regarding usage behavior like impression management. In contrast, the aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of the twenty-first century digital divide related to societal patterns of recognition and therefore also in its symbolic dimension with respect to social inequalities.

Recognition in social sciences The concept of recognition inspired generations of social and philosophical thinkers since Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit (Ikäheimo, 2009, p. 325). Over the past 25 years, recognition theories have elicited a lively academic debate as well as public interest and philosophy, and the social sciences attach great importance to recognition (Schmidt am Busch, 2011, p. 28). Beginning in the 1990s, discussion took place first in the field of philosophical and political theory (for an overview see Düwell, 2011; Halbig, 2002). Increasingly, there have also been considerable efforts in various other research areas such as human and social sciences to integrate recognition approaches (Ikäheimo, 2009; Zurn, 2009, p. 7, p. 325). From different perspectives – theoretical as well as empirical – a broad range of social phenomena have been discussed in terms of recognition. Rooted in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, it was social philosopher Axel Honneth who gave recognition center stage in his theoretical endeavors (in particular Honneth, 1992, 2000, 2006, 2010, 2011). Honneth has elaborated the concept of mutual recognition as a fundamental requirement of the development of practical identity and moral sense and as a constitutional element of normative orders, social reproduction and social change. He argues that struggles for recognition are crucial to describe and explain structures and dynamics of modern societies: structural transformations,

A “recognitional” on digital divide 119 social integration and social freedom are ultimately based on struggles for recognition (Van den Brink & Owen, 2007, p. 18). Moreover, for Honneth, recognition is a key to exploring social preconditions of and obstacles to autonomy and freedom. He develops recognition as the normative anchor for social critique that allows the unveiling of distorted social relations, pathologies and coercions in order to further social freedom through morally justified relations of recognition (Zurn, 2015, p. 6). In the following paragraph, we will sketch out basically selected aspects of Axel Honneth’s comprehensive philosophical work. Although Honneth has further developed and refined his social theory of recognition during the last two decades, we refer mainly to his initial deliberations as unfolded in The struggle for recognition.1 From our viewpoint, this fundamental work provides particularly interesting insights that form good starting points for the discussion of the digital divide and recognition patterns.

Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition Axel Honneth’s starting point is to trace how people come to an understanding of themselves that is both oriented by the norms, values, structures and goals of the social world and by individual needs, beliefs and ambitions (Zurn, 2015, p. 24). Elaborating on the works of Hegel’s early years in Jena, the pragmatic approach of George-Herbert Mead, the writings of British object-relations psychologist Donald W. Winnicott and the more recent reflections of Jessica Benjamin, Honneth answers in The struggle for recognition that the development of this understanding of self takes place through interactions with others. Whilst the Habermasian viewpoint of intersubjectivity focuses on the normative reconstruction and validity of communicative claims (Deranty, 2009, p. 146, 328), Honneth stresses intersubjective interactions in terms of recognition. Considering the digital divide through social media usage recognition theory thus allows exceeding a discursive perspective: it stresses affective elements of interpersonal relationships shaped by social media usage. This means not only to focus on verbal (non-) manifestations but also on nonverbal routines like pictures or emoticons as forms of silent affective expressions. Besides, recognition theory calls attention to experiences of invisible suffering and its ramifications caused by the digital divide. For Honneth, the development of practical relations to the self consists of three distinct types: self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. One can solely come to be a fully autonomous and individuated person by developing these three relations to self. These crucial aspects of identity formation and personality development are acquired through intersubjective relations of mutual recognition, which allow a self-understanding as a worthy and distinct person. The three species of practical relation to self are constituted in and through social relations across three different spheres (Van den Brink & Owen, 2007, p. 10): love, legal rights and solidarity. Relations within those spheres provide – or deny – categorical experiences of recognition. They correspond to specific forms of disrespect, which threaten personal development. The three spheres of recognition designate fundamental types of normative interactions necessary for modern

120  Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan Table 9.1  The structure of relations of recognition. The structure of relations of recognition Mode of recognition Dimension of personality Forms of recognition

Emotional support Cognitive respect Social esteem Needs and emotions Moral responsibility Traits and abilities

Primary relationships Legal relations (love, friendship) (rights) Development potential Generalization, de-formalization Practical Basic self-confidence Self-respect relation-to-self Forms of disrespect Abuse and rape Denial of rights, exclusion Threatened component Physical integrity Social integrity of personality

Community of values (solidarity) Individualization, equalization Self-esteem Denigration, insult “Honour,” dignity

Source: Honneth, 2005, p. 129.

subjects to develop their full autonomy (Deranty, 2009, p. 271). As identityformation is fundamentally based on those relationships, there is a basic moral imperative for being recognized appropriately by others (Zurn, 2015, p. 6). Table 9.1 summarizes the structure of relations of recognition. Recognition and struggles for recognition In the following section, we will elaborate on the three basic spheres of recognition depicted in Honneth’s structural model. It is important to keep in mind that Honneth construes his concept of distinctive spheres of recognition not hierarchically, but as interrelated and intertwined. As Honneth mentions, we have to avoid misunderstanding the three spheres and their related forms of recognition (anthropologically) as stable and universal. They are rooted in basic anthropological “intuitions” on the one hand and the reconstruction of historically established structures of society on the other (Honneth & Marcelo, 2013). The first sphere of recognition is the one of love and care, which is crucial for the individual’s development of basic self-confidence. The concept of love enfolds a broad meaning of primary relationships constituted by strong emotional or affective attachments (Honneth, 2005, p. 95). This includes parent-child relationships as well as adult relationships based on the model of friendship or erotic love. Self-confidence as the related form of practical relation to self refers to experiences of being loved and recognized as a person with needs, and to the ability to express basic needs and desires without fear (Anderson, 2005, p. xiii; Honneth, 2005, p. 95). It is grounded in the affirmation of bodily integrity and the satisfaction of very basic needs (Honneth, 2005, p. 107). Self-confidence as the “conceptual and genetic” baseline requirement for every other form of practical relation to self is disrupted by experiences of extreme violations of one’s physical integrity, e.g., through torture or rape (Honneth, 2005, p. 132). The digital divide affects this sphere of recognition because it can impair persons to express, to be seen and

A “recognitional” on digital divide 121 to be satisfied in their basic physical, mental and social needs – considering, e.g., processes of social isolation or people on the move. Relations arising from legal rights are the second major form of intersubjective recognition. Here “individuals gain a sense of self-respect only in and through the individual rights that are granted to members of a legal community” (Zurn, 2015, p. 34). Recognition is granted by a reciprocal acceptance of legal rights (Honneth, 2005, p. 120). In this sphere, individuals are able to understand themselves as bearers of rights in a legal system. Because the legitimacy of the legal order in the modern state depends on a rational agreement of autonomous and reasonable persons, legal rights and law ascribe the members of such a community the capacity of conducting themselves in a responsible way as well as being morally accountable (Honneth, 2005, p. 114). This form of recognition enables a person to “understand herself as someone who possesses the capacities […] that make her appear as a full member of society who is able to participate in the processes of will-formation by which a society gives itself the law” (Van den Brink & Owen, 2007, p. 13). Bearing the same universal rights as all other community members allows the subjects to evolve self-respect as the corresponding form of practical relation to self. For Honneth, social and political conflicts about rights have to be regarded in terms of a struggle for respect. Disrespect in the sphere of legal rights appears if rights, granted to all others, are denied to one person or if a person is excluded from a certain legal standing. Exclusion and the denial of rights express misrecognition not only by the loss of protection through the rights (Honneth, 2005, p. 133), they also violate the status of an individual as being an equal, free and fully morally responsible actor within society. This form of suffering from recognition thus deprives the person of the ability to develop an appropriate sense of self-respect as a legal subject (Zurn, 2015, p. 39). The digital divide not only affects this ability to claim one’s rights (in a discursive sense), e.g., through (non-)access to IT-resources and networks or communicative skills; from a viewpoint of recognition we must also take into account invisible patterns of communicative rules and knowledge for the sake of action or control in the usage of social media. Although the conception of modern legal rights is rooted in the idea of equality among individuals, there is no doubt that claiming one’s rights depends on a minimum of economic and social capital. The third sphere of recognition concerns relations in a community of values. Intersubjective relations in this sphere enable a person to develop basic self-esteem as the specific form of practical relation to self through social recognition in relations of solidarity. Whilst the sphere of legal rights “represents a medium of recognition that expresses the universal features of human subjects” (Honneth, 2005, p. 122), social esteem results from the experience of being recognized for one’s particular and unique qualities and personal differences. Following Honneth’s argumentation, one can only come to appreciate one’s values, talents and uniqueness to the extent that they are positively evaluated by others (Zurn, 2015, p. 41). Thus, there is a strong interrelation between self-regard and institutionalized normative expectations, aspirations and values within a social community. Moreover,

122  Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan this form of recognition implies that relations rest on a shared common horizon of values and ideals. From a historical point of view, Honneth illustrates the development from hierarchically organized societies with relatively stable value-ideas towards contemporary pluralistic societies, which are characterized by a broad variety of social expectations and values (Honneth, 2005, p. 123). One no longer gains recognition as a member of an entire collective, but for one’s individual achievements and abilities (Van den Brink & Owen, 2007, p. 14). Being recognized as valuable in that way allows one to develop self-esteem: “To the extent to which every member of a society is in a position to esteem himself or herself, one can speak of a state of societal solidarity” (Honneth, 2005, p. 129). In pluralistic and globalized societies, the struggle for recognition is decided to a large extent in the framework of competing or rival norms and values. As the various conceptions of a “good life” range from insular subcultures with their very own esteem order to a broad community of value good for western capitalist democracies, social conflicts occur in terms of a struggle for social recognition with respect to particular (individual as well as collective) ways of life (Zurn, 2015, p. 42). Corresponding to the experience of social esteem, disrespect in the sphere of solidarity appears in the form of cultural denigration and insult. Although in-group solidarity might compensate somewhat, being insulted or denigrated as a member of a group for one’s specific way of life basically impairs one’s self-realization (Zurn, 2015, p. 43). Regarding individuals, “the experience of this social devaluation typically brings with it a loss of personal self-esteem, of the opportunity to regard themselves as beings whose traits and abilities are esteemed” (Honneth, 2005, p. 134). As, for example, practices of othering, expressions of sympathy and solidarity as well as social (in) visibilities are related to access and usage of social media, the digital divide perpetuates social inequalities, disrespect and devaluation of individuals or groups. Persons are therefore positively recognized through different modes of intersubjective relationships of mutual recognition: emotional support in the sphere of love, cognitive respect expressed through legal rights and social esteem expressed in solidarity relations with others (Zurn, 2015, p. 39). Not being recognized or lacking recognition causes feelings of harm and injustice and may motivate subjects to enter a struggle for recognition. We argue that social media can be seen as scenes for such struggles also. Along the three axes of recognition, social conflicts are described by a moral grammar informed by the means of struggles for recognition: “Recognition enables agents (individuals and groups) to both assert their identity and discover new features of their identity; these new features, however, since unrecognized, necessitate a new struggle for recognition, and so on” (Deranty, 2004, p. 301). Thus, social recognition between individuals is deeply entangled with the normative structure and values of a society. In social struggles for recognition, this deeprooted linkage between socialized individuals and social patterns becomes evident. Corresponding to the three forms of practical relation to self, there are three different types of moral conflicts: conflicts about social conditions to safeguard physical integrity, conflicts to claim legal rights and conflicts to be recognized

A “recognitional” on digital divide 123 in solidarity for one’s particular way of life (Honneth, 2005, p. 169). The digital divide maintains and exacerbates all three types of moral conflicts: access to, material availability and usage behavior of social media are increasingly intertwined with the visibility and social appreciation of individuals or groups, political decision-making, lobbying, social movements, etc. This is related to the distribution of economic resources and societal patterns of power as well as to possibilities of social resistance and emancipation. Considering selected studies on social media usage we will show how recognition theory can contribute to a broader understanding of social stratification and inequalities related to digital divide and social media. We first present a short literature review which we second interpret in the light of recognition theory.

Interpreting the digital divide from a perspective of recognition In order to identify studies dealing with the twenty-first century digital divide with the aim of analyzing and interpreting them within a framework of recognition, we conducted a three-step systematic literature review: First, we collected fifty-two relevant journal papers and searched for articles published between 2010 and 2016 that refer to “social media” and the “digital divide” in their abstracts. We identified thirty relevant studies. We then analyzed the articles with respect to the effects they identified as determining the digital divide and the consequences presented. Based on this analysis, we sorted the articles into seven groups: democracy & participation, protest, prosperity, influence & attendance, health & wellbeing, education, migration & integration. Table 9.2 describes the results. The categories of political participation, protest movements as well as influence and attendance show that the digital divide influences access possibilities to be informed about political and legal matters, to participate in the decision-making process and to voice one’s concerns and needs. Persons or groups excluded are not only constrained in exercising and claiming their rights as moral and mature members of a legal community. They are restricted in the ability to express their very traits and abilities in the public will-formation process and might suffer from not being recognized in their specific ways of lives or from not being seen at all. Moreover, the studies of Brown (2015) and Prestin et al. (2015) are linked to the second order digital divide to ethnic and racial discrimination, which corresponds to experiences of being denigrated, insulted or debased. On a personal level, the digital divide affects the capacity to develop self-respect and self-esteem in relations of cognitive respect and social esteem. Above, the studies indicate that social media is a platform for struggles for recognition: being able to participate in the formation of (political and social) will-building means being able to address claims to recognition. From a structural point of view, expressions in social media have to be rebounded to the normative patterns within society. Considering studies of migration and integration, the digital divide affects primary and close relationships (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014). The studies also point out that social media have an impact on the information and knowledge relevant to organizing migration and integration processes. Thus, the digital divide does

124  Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan Table 9.2  Social media and digital divide. Category

Description

Democracy & The digital divide in social media is directly linked to participation Participation gaps of marginal groups and citizens in democratic settings or civic engagement (Brown, 2015; Ignatow & Schuett, 2011; Monforti & Marichal, 2014). Protest Articles dealing with protest movements focus on three different aspects: movements process of informing (Nielsen, 2013; Rushkoff, 2013; Stalker & Wood, 2013), expression of opinions of marginalized groups (Zhang, 2013), empowering individuals in developing countries (Ali, 2011). Prosperity This category primarily deals with the first order digital divide and how it is related to the economic prosperity of countries (Jain & Saraf, 2013; Leidig & Teeuw, 2015). Influence & Caused by the digital divide, influence and attendance based on Attendance social media content differs: restaurant reviews (Baginski, Sui, & Malecki, 2014), domination of organizations and ethnic groups (white supremacy) in shaping content and technology in social media (Dahlberg, 2015; Wojcieszak, 2010). Health & Access to and usage of health information and medical information is Well-being directly linked to the digital divide (DeCamp, 2012; Jaganath, Gill, Cohen, & Young, 2012; Kontos, Emmons, Puleo, & Viswanath, 2010; Naftel et al., 2013; Prestin et al., 2015). Fung et al. (2014) showed differences concerning the expression of anxiety. Education Several studies share the requirements of material and cognitive access as well as usage behavior for the learning processes: Social media are more and more used as learning and relationship building tools (Nowell, 2014), to improve learning (Eaton, 2015) and for educational interventions (Li, Snow, & Edwards, 2015). Social media are transforming migration networks and thereby lowering Migration & Integration the threshold for migration by maintaining strong ties with family and friends and offering access to sources of insider knowledge on migration that is discrete and unofficial (Dekker & Engbersen, 2014).

not only affect becoming part of a legal and value community, but also fundamentally shapes personal integrity. For example, the digital divide can exclude individuals and groups from basic information about political stability, health care or safeguarding. This aspect becomes even more important with respect to marginalized or even invisible groups like poor and homeless people (Jain & Saraf, 2013) or, at a more macro-level, “data-poor” countries (Leidig & Teeuw, 2015), as described in the category of prosperity. From a viewpoint of recognition, social media in education have to be discussed not only in terms of mere access or mere skills training. They have to be related to central processes of identity formation and social participation in and through educational processes, which refer to patterns of recognition and moral sense. As social media are used more and more in learning and teaching environments (Nowell, 2014), the digital divide influences a core area of social recognition: those who are specifically in need of the emancipatory function of education and learning processes (e.g., through language) are even more at risk to

A “recognitional” on digital divide 125 be aggrieved if they have no material access or usage skills. Furthermore, using social media in education is strongly related to “public acknowledgment” and refers to a social community of values (Couldry et al., 2014, p. 21). Health and well-being studies stress the role of social media in being informed about health and care services as well as prevention and diseases. Being and becoming healthy and experiencing assistance through care relations can be seen as a crucial factor in one’s basic personal integrity. Health matters are often closely related to primary relationships and shape fundamental experiences of love and care as well as basic threats of one’s very intactness (Andersen & Svensson, 2012, p. 159). This short overview shows that the digital divide affects both an individual dimension of the development of practical relations to self as well as, concurrently, to social structures and normative patterns. From an individual point of view, despite the fact that interpersonal relations in social media are technically mediated and do not require physical attendance, there is a strong emotional and affective component. From a structural point of view, social media provide platforms to express one’s feelings and to gain experiences related to love relations (in the broad sense depicted above) and, correspondingly, experiences of being threatened at a very basic level. Having or not having access to social media, and being or not being able to participate appropriately in their use, might also influence experiences in face-to-face relationships. With social media becoming more and more important for individuals to be informed about the rights they have or should have, the digital divide excludes non-users from the ability to claim rights – not only with respect to access to material resources and skills, but also with respect to the second order digital divide related to usage behavior. For example, the studies assessed under the categories democracy and participation and protest movements in our literature review elucidate that social media are important with respect to addressing equal rights, e.g., for marginalized groups or excluded people. Whereas those findings tend to evaluate social media from an optimistic perspective, several authors have argued that social media failed to help in social protests (e.g., Fenton & Barassi, 2011; Morozov, 2011). Being recognized as part of the legal community means bearing (and being able to demand) the same rights for equal access to basic health services, education and political participation. After all, the digital divide tends to lead to the exclusion of some persons or groups, which might enhance cultural denigration. It also excludes them structurally from being recognized for their specific way of life and their own particular abilities. This form of disrespect refers to relations of solidarity and shared values and it affects the ability to develop and maintain self-esteem. To sum up, from a recognitional point of view, the digital divide in social media is not only a matter of mere access or usage. The digital divide bears on all three spheres of recognition, as it affects patterns of and struggles for recognition, which affect the development of practical relations to the self as well as modes of social inclusion along the three axes of recognition. We illustrate our deliberations in the following figure:

126  Eva Klinkisch and Anne Suphan

Figure 9.1  The digital divide from a perspective of recognition.

Whilst the first order digital divide results in a struggle for access, the second order digital divide takes place within struggles through usage of social media. Both exclusion from or impairment to material and cognitive access of social media (e.g., having no computer, smartphone or network availability, being not able or skilled using social media) might cause experiences of misrecognition. But even if a person has such access, the digital divide, additionally, perpetuates through how she uses social media and gives raise to experiences of recognition or misrecognition. Those struggles are framed by a feeling of moral sense, social norms and institutionalized recognition patterns in a society. Struggles for recognition in social media thus are not detached from non-media struggles or inequalities but rooted in (and mediated by) the very societal context.

Limitations and conclusion In this article, we could only apply Axel Honneth’s recognition theory very roughly. We were not able to give anything more than a first and most rudimentary view on the digital divide in social media usage as explained through social recognition theory. Besides extensive theoretical reflections, empirical aspects should be investigated in a more detailed way, e.g., how and which ethnic minorities or marginalized social groups are affected by the digital divide and how this might correspond to patterns of recognition.

A “recognitional” on digital divide 127 For this, it is important to discuss the design as well as the outcomes of particular studies. This corresponds to another limitation of our results: in order to throw a first glance at the benefits of a perspective of recognition on the digital divide, we interpreted the studies on a fairly high level of abstraction. However, to analyze social struggles for recognition and practices involving misrecognition requires micro-studies about (non- and mis-)recognition practices as well as a suitable and deliberate review of normative structures. Moreover, it would be interesting to examine different forms of conflicts over recognition or to discuss the important issue to which extent social conflicts and inequalities caused by the digital divide can be understood as struggles for recognition. Honneth (2005) mentions the difference between conflicts of interest and conflicts for recognition. Besides, he – as well as many other studies – refers to pathological or even brutalized forms of social struggles (e.g., Honneth, 2011, 2012). This has to be further discussed. Above, there has been an intensive discussion (particularly Fraser & Honneth, 2003) on whether recognition might function as an overarching framework for all sorts of social struggles (as Honneth suggests) or whether social struggles originate from discerned motivations (e.g., Fraser distinguishes between conflicts of recognition, redistribution and representation – Fraser, 2004). Further research should also investigate to what extent the usage of social media shows struggles for recognition. Considering, e.g., Honneth’s reflections on social pathologies, the question has to be examined to what extent those struggles are purely about visibility or show tendencies of reification and ideologization. In conclusion, we have come to three important insights: First, from the viewpoint of social theory, digital divide in social media usage is embedded in the fundamental process of social development and change through individual and social struggles for recognition. Second, from the perspective of identity formation and individual participation as an autonomous person, the access to social media, the ability to use them and the behavior on social media influence the development of a practical relation to self with respect to self-confidence, self-respect and selfesteem. Finally, from a structural point of view, the digital divide is not only an issue of justice, but also one of power, (economic) distribution and social stratification. Thus, in terms of recognition, the digital divide intersects with social struggles for recognition.

Note 1 In the following paragraphs, we will refer to the English translation (2005) of Kampf um Anerkennung (1992).

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Section 3

Critical and alternative perspectives

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10 Rethinking the information society A decolonial and border gnosis of the digital divide in Africa and the Global South Last Moyo Introduction What does it mean to rethink the information society and its attendant problem of the digital divide? Can the decolonization of the Internet further enhance democratization of the information society and radically transform the problem of the digital divide? The predominant view, largely driven by Western scholarship, is that the digital divide is primarily about the gap that exists between people who have access to the Internet and those that do not have any access (Van Djik, 2005; Murelli, 2002; Norris, 2001). For a long time, the debate on the divide has been largely about the perils of lack of physical access to the Internet. Access is seen as a solution to the digital divide and not part of the problem. However, as some scholars have recently noted, the digital divide debate must also be about the problems that are embedded in access and how that access reproduces, reconfigures, and perpetuates other social inequalities (Wessels, 2013). This view resonates profoundly with the social experience of Internet users and non-users from Africa and the Global South. What does access or lack of access mean within these contexts? Is access a form of colonization and disempowerment? Does lack of access amount to social exclusion or forms of digital apartheid that result in inequalities? From the social, geographic, historical, and epistemic angle of the South, it is imperative that the problem of access or lack of it is embedded within a more general perspective of the politics of exclusion and underdevelopment between the North and the South. Indeed, the digital divide debate makes more sense if it is recast “within the landscape of larger social and political formations that allow for a richer and more complicated discussion” (Monroe, 2004, p. 9). Rethinking the digital divide from the South therefore requires that we question, if not altogether reject, the terms of the debate set by the North because he who controls the terms of engagement naturally controls the debate. Besides, most Western scholars write about the divide sitting on the privileged side of the divide with access to a panoply of smart gadgets that provide seamless Internet accessibility and availability. Thus, rethinking the divide in a radical and transformative way may even require new vocabulary that is able to articulate a “native perspective” (Charkrabarty, 2000). For example, what if the so-called “have-nots” of the information society

134  Last Moyo actually consciously do not need the Internet in its current form? Put differently, what if the “have-nots” are actually the “don’t wants” who see the current model of the Internet and information society as not truly liberating? The digital divide is complex, multidimensional, ideological, and informed by variegated local and global experiences (Ragnedda and Muschert, 2013, Moyo, 2009; Hassan, 2004). This chapter seeks to extend this argument through a decolonial critique of the digital divide. Using the case study of Africa that hardly has any language and cultural presence online, it uses decolonial and border analysis to argue that the Internet represents a virtual form of coloniality that is generally part of a broader matrix of power of Western modernity (Mignolo, 2000). Looking at the dominance of Euro-American languages and content online, I argue that the Internet reproduces colonialities of space, technology, being, power, knowledge, and culture that cut off meaningful participation by Africans in the information society understood generally as “a community in which information and the technological infrastructures used to create, store, and network information like the Internet are increasingly central to all forms of social, political and economic activity” (Dutton, 2003, p. 407). From a decolonial perspective, access and participation by Africans remains largely elitist and within the frames of reference set by the West. From the electro-magnetic spectrum in the orbit, the global forces for Internet governance, and mobile and telecoms networks that provide access, Western interests are highly entrenched in the production, distribution, and consumption of the Internet. Like many other divides that characterize the modern colonial world system, the digital divide is a product of Western modernity as both a structure and a discourse. Through its enlightenment project, Western modernity created a world of freedom and dignity for its subjects in the North. However, the South has continuously faced its darker side as seen through slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, neoliberal globalization, and the so-called information society. Following Mignolo (2011), Sabelo Ndlovu contends that Western modernity birthed a world order that is “racially hierarchized, imperialistic, colonialist, Euro-American-centric, Christian-centric, hetero-normative, patriarchal, and violent” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Dastille, 2013, p. 15). These divisions in the physical world are also reproduced in the virtual world of the Internet through new modes of discrimination representing the digital apartheid. In decolonial and border gnosis, universal access to computers in Africa cannot therefore be viewed simply as the panacea to the digital divide problem. While the Northern archive has framed the divide largely as a class, geography, literacy, and skills problem, a Southern perspective to it places race, culture, colonial difference, and even ideology as its key defining elements. As Barbara Monroe observes, the divide is at once “racial, discursive, and even epistemological in character” (Monroe, 2004, p. 9). Bridging the divide therefore requires many things, including domesticating the Internet to be a cultural technology, a term that I do not use in the Bolin (2013) sense of “culture as technology”, but to refer to those technologies that are socially shaped by the producing or adopting of

Rethinking the information society 135 societies to nurture their cultures. Based on the social shaping thesis, cultural technology must be agentive of the adopting culture as opposed to a foreign culture; it exudes a people’s culture, history, and identity. It is culture in material or technological form. Cultural technologies do not alienate or disembody a people through the symbolic annihilation of their linguistic presence, but must embody them in ways that show concrete and historically situated social experience. “Languages are not something human beings have but they are part of what human beings are” and they “are embedded in the body and in the memories of each person” (Mignolo, 2006, p. 210). However, looking at the current model of the information society as a space, Africa is arguably disembodied, dominated, and isolated. It is a space of a people without a language, a culture, a place, and meaningful virtual presence. Yet the digital divide debate in Africa has been “a lot [more] about connectivity and less about connecting with the real concerns of users and potential users” (Toure et al., 2008, p. 10). In this colonial model of the Internet and information society, the African user is imagined merely as a disembodied “Other”. They are mere Internet users who do not have their own bodies, spatial inscriptions, (virtual) symbols, history, culture, or identity. They just gratify in using the computers as tools of communication and not as technologies of cultural expression, cultural freedom, and identity formation. The import of the decolonial and border critique to the digital divide is that it creates possibilities for a new loci of enunciation that recasts access to the Internet within a cultural and linguistic turn empowering to Africa and the Global South. Consequently, access outside content, language, epistemes, and culture is seen as alienating and disenfranchising, if not altogether useless as it merely extends various forms of coloniality of the non-Western subject. The primary objective of coloniality is that it dominates, dislocates, and continues the age-old divides reminiscent of the colonial system. As a radical critical theory, decoloniality requires reflexivity about the fact that we must think about the digital divide from where we are geographically, culturally, historically, and epistemologically. We are in Africa and the Global South, the subalternized “Others”, “the border” – postcolonies who belong to the margins and peripheries of Western modernity. It stands counterposed to universalism, emphasizing particularism of the border as both a location and a mindset anchored on colonial difference, cultural and racial experience, and African subjectivities. Hence, those at the margins or border must provide a “native perspective” of the digital divide based on the ontological experience of their interactions with the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the Internet as gadgets of global capitalist expansion and accumulation. As Ya’u (2004, p. 11) contends, new ICTs as the architecture of neoliberal globalization and the networked capitalism are not primarily there to benefit the ordinary people as spaces of democratic interaction and engagement, but to “work in the interests of [Anglo-American] multinationals”. These represent the obvious manifestations of Western capitalism that have been unmasked by Western Marxism, albeit without using race, culture, and colonial difference as the epicenter of analysis.

136  Last Moyo

Beyond political economy of the divide Marxian political economy theories have shed some light on how the Internet is “tightly intertwined with the global economy” (McChesney, 1997, p. 130). They have been able to unmask how new media technologies are a strategic part of neoliberal globalization’s architecture for the expansion of global capital. In the digital divide debate, market and political interests are shown to negatively impact democratic citizen access online through prohibitive pricing or draconian laws. However, the problem with Marxian approaches is that they privilege a political economic analysis of the divide at the expense of a decolonial cultural analysis that teases out issues of identity, race, and colonial difference. For example, what does it mean to be African, black, and a former colonial subject in the information society? How does (neo)colonial experience shape how one thinks and feels the digital divide? For all its brilliance in class analysis in the digital divide’s information class structures, Marxian approaches inherently lack an analytical impulse for how digital racism and colonial difference play out in the divide. Furthermore, the problem of the digital divide in Africa cannot be discussed in isolation of those historical, social, political, and global forces that have produced it. The divide is not fundamentally a problem of access, but that of neutralized agency in cultural, scientific, and technological innovation. Some scholars have equated this to a “cultural bomb” whose “effect has been to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, languages, capacities and ultimately in themselves (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 3). When a people have no belief in themselves, they can never be able to think independently, let alone have the confidence to create anything outside mimicry and parrotry of the dominating cultural force. The quest for decolonial theory is based on the need to understand the digital divide as indicative of the broader structural and ideological problems undermining Africa’s agency. In order to radically reframe and transform the Internet we need to now generate theories that help us to “focus [more] on the knower (i.e. Europe) than the known (i.e. Africa)”, and this “means to go to the very assumptions that sustain [Europe’s] locus of enunciations [in all its artificial socio, bio, geo, and techno divides]” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 123). As I argue in the next section, decolonial theory seeks to transcend political economy analysis of the divide by shifting the locus of enunciation to race, culture, ideology, and colonial difference.

The decolonial and border theory It is important to start by situating decolonial and border thinking theory as an intellectual project from the South. Decolonniality is not part of the imperial epistemologies emanating from the North. It does not come from the center but the radical exteriority of those that Western modernity has subalternized. First, it is associated with Latin American scholars such as Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, Ramon Grosfoguel, and Maldonado-Torres. Second, African scholars such as Franz Fanon, Ngugi waThingo, Valentin Mudimbe, and Kwame Nkrumah have also written extensively within that tradition although not specifically identifying

Rethinking the information society 137 themselves as decolonial theorists. This brief contextualization of the decolonial and border theory shows that it enjoys African agency. Decolonial theory is a combative response to the problems that are caused by Western modernity through its ideologies of Eurocentricism, capitalist exploitation, and neoliberalism. These three ideologies intersect to produce a dominant modern world system that is based on the logic of coloniality that is essentially an ideology of subjugating, dominating, and exploiting the “Other”. Quijano (1997, p. 117) and Mignolo (2000, p. 54) situate coloniality within a Gramscian perspective as “the hegemony of Eurocentricism as an epistemological perspective” where “dominated populations [are] assigned identities and subjected to it as [a worldview or way of knowing the world and themselves]”. Maldonado-Torres (2007, p. 247) observes that “coloniality is still alive in books, [online], in the criteria for academic performance, and in cultural patterns”. It is the heart and soul of Euro-American modernity, which as Mignolo (2000) observes, is based on a colonial matrix that enslaves the body and the mind of the “Other”. Here the Foucauldian notions of “governmentality”, “bio-politics”, and “bio-power” can be used to extend our understanding of coloniality. Governmentality essentially points to how “power permeates, characterizes, and constitutes the [social] body” through “the production, accumulation, and circulation [of] a functioning [entanglement] of discourse” (Foucault, 1980, p. 93). Like governmentality, coloniality is when domination effectively inscribes itself into the body, psyche, and spaces of the “Other” in ways that make domination almost automatic, natural, and commonsensical. Western modernity as a civilization is the originator and sole beneficiary of this colonial modern world system that is structurally and ideologically assaultive to alterity and difference, while at the same time pretending to tolerate, accommodate, and celebrate diversity. Mignolo (2000) speaks of a “Western code”, a linguistic deployment of aestheticized ideologies that misleads as much as it obfuscates the monstrosity of Western modernity. Words such as civilization concealed colonization while globalization and the information society conceal Western expropriation at a global scale. Western modernity is therefore a system and structure that is based on a ‘colonial matrix’ of power that consciously seeks to dominate, subordinate, and discipline the non-Western subject (Mignolo, 2011). It rests principally on the following three pillars, that is, (i) the coloniality of power, (ii) coloniality of being, and (iii) coloniality of knowledge. Coloniality of power refers to the fact that Western modernity has developed a whole institutional and technological infrastructure for its global hegemony and protection of its economic interests. The global media work to reinforce the stereotype of the non-Western subject as primitive, barbaric, and uncivilized while Brettonwoods institutions entrench a neoliberal capitalist order. Together, these organizations and their technological infrastructure constitute the discourse sites of white superiority and black primitiveness. Coloniality of being refers to those issues to do with subjectivity, identity, and personhood. Western modernity isolates and marginalizes the “Other”, by assaulting their sense of being. Through Eurocentricism, Western modernity “bifurcates the world into the ‘West and the Rest’, and organises everyday language into

138  Last Moyo binaristic hierarchies implicitly flattering to Europe: our nations, their tribes; our religion, their superstition; our demonstrations, their riots; our defence, their terrorism” (Shohat and Stam, 2000, p. 2). Western modernity primarily works by framing alterity as inferior thus implicitly inventing the myth of white supremacy (Kebede, 2009). Coloniality of knowledge is about how Western knowledge is presented as universal while knowledge produced by non-Westerners is viewed negatively. Rabaka (2010) uses the concept of “epistemic apartheid” to demonstrate how Western modernity discriminates knowledge from the non-Western critical traditions. This discrimination is located in the geo-politics and biopolitics of knowledge and follows the contours of race and colonial difference. Grosfoguel (2008) argues that Western knowledge’s claims to superiority and universality are key to epistemic colonization of the Global South. When knowledge pretends to be universally applicable, it hides its locus of enunciation so that the colonial subject accepts it as superior. Decolonial theory acknowledges the subalternity and border thinking of the non-Westerners since they are rejected in the center. It is about “realiz[ing] and accept[ing] that your life is a life in the border as opposed to being a universal being” and “knowledge conceived from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial word system” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 11). It emphasizes the fact that “academic knowledge and understanding should be complemented with learning from those who are living in and thinking from colonial and postcolonial legacies” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 5). It is more about the fact that “the 3rd world produces not only cultures to be studied by [Europeans], but also intellectuals who generate theories and reflect on their history, culture, and culture” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 129).

On language, culture, and the divide The language question is not new to the digital divide debate. It has been discussed by European scholars within the context of literacies required to use computers and access content online (Horton, 2013; Servon, 2002). These scholars often acknowledge the dominance of English and other Western languages online, but see the solution as improving basic literacies so that users can interface easily with hardware and content through those languages. That the user has to use a foreign, and in most cases, a former colonial language, is not a big issue for them. This is not surprising given how, even in the aftermath of colonialism, Africa continues to be linguistically framed as Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa, and Lusophone Africa. The impact of this Eurocentric characterization of Africa is the deletion of Africa’s own indigenous languages and cultural experience in physical spaces. The naming and organization of space, any space, is “a vital part of the battle for control” (Philo, 2011, p. 163). In this case, it is arguably a display of the cartographies of power between Africa and Europe, a reconfiguration of coloniality in African physical spaces long after the physical departure of the colonizer. Indeed, the coloniality of Africa’s physical spaces through Western languages, from cities to street names, is not any different from that of the Internet as a technology and a virtual space. The only difference is the virtualization of coloniality

Rethinking the information society 139 that has given it mobility, the new technological legs that allow it quantum leaps in time and space. It is important to note that the naming of spaces has both structured and structuring qualities. “We make time and place, just as we are made by them” (Bender, 2001, p. 4). It is therefore not surprising that the geo-linguistic mapping of Africa interpellates Africans as loyal subjects of the spatialization of coloniality. In South Africa, for example, one witnesses this naturalization and historicization of coloniality in every weather bulletin. In addition to the colonial names of popular cities the reader may already know, you have other towns like Upington, Worcester, Queenstown, Grahamstown, Bethlehem, Carolina, George, Barberton, Harrismith, Victoria West, Richards Bay, and worst of all, East London and Newcastle. Here we see how apartheid as a form of coloniality operated by conquering and labeling space in its languages. The dominance of Western languages online is not accidental but consistent with the imperialistic behavior of Western colonialism. “Wherever they went, in their voyages on land, sea, and mind, Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted (wa Thiong’o, 2009, p. 7). Mapping, exploration, and surveying were always quickly followed by naming, the holy grail of colonizing space. Spatial hegemony therefore “depends on an ability to control the material context of personal and social experience” (Harvey, 1990, p. 228). The control of space is the control of the meaning of everyday life, and this is clearly what the Internet does. However, the critical issue on this for those who theorize the information society and digital divide from the South is this: How should those who are sitting at the borders or hinterlands of Western modernity critically engage with the question of the digital divide? Can we provide revolutionary solutions to the divide if we thought as Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone Africans? To what extent can the structuring qualities of colonially produced places produce a counter-hegemonic interpretation of the divide based on silenced voices and histories? Grosfoguel (2008, p. 64) argues that the “success of the modern colonial world system consists precisely in making subjects that are socially located on the oppressed side of the colonial difference think epistemically like the ones in dominant positions”. Clearly then, those who are the victims of the colonial model of the information society, that is, a neoliberal network society that amounts to the virtual dissipation of coloniality, cannot afford the luxury of engaging the digital divide question from the perspectives of their oppressors. A new lens, a new language, and a new episteme is needed to characterize the digital divide in ways that bring about a new Internet that is born out of the transformative agency of decoloniality and not the usual liberal cosmetic policy interventions. In Africa and the Global South, the language issue of the digital divide requires radical theoretical and policy interventions. It would be a betrayal of the masses for African scholars to pursue Eurocentric arguments of the need for basic and functional literacies to bridge the divide because language is not just merely for communication purposes, but “a collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history” (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 15). From this perspective, the language question is central in understanding the scope and depth of the digital divide in

140  Last Moyo the border. It “is not about the touchy-feely sensitivity toward other groups, [but] about dispersing power, empowering the disempowered, about transforming subordinating institutions, [technologies], and discourses” (Shohat and Stam, 2000, p. 49). The Internet World Statistics, a website that gets its figures from organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Nielsen/ Net ratings, makes the following grave observations about the state of languages online as of November 2015: •

•

Five of the world’s top ten languages online are European languages. These are English (Number one with 873 million users), Spanish (Number three with 257 million users), Portuguese (Number five with 131 million users), French (Number nine with 97.2 million users), German (Number ten with 83.7 million users). The English language continues to be the number one language online. This is very consistent with the W3Techs observation that 55 percent of the world’s most visited websites are in English. Apart from English, the other European languages are also equally dominant especially compared to their small national populations.

The website indicates that there is no gradable presence of African languages online. On the surface of it, this is not surprising since Africa is generally regarded as a backward continent compared to Europe. Without significant penetration of the telecoms infrastructure due to poor economies, it naturally must follow that the availability, affordability, and accessibility of digital technologies must be low. As some scholars argue, the “digital divide is but an indicator of the deeper economic malaise of poverty and economic exclusion (Hassan, 2004, p. 68) and it “cannot be reversed without tackling the plurality of factors that lead to inequality… [because]… access to ICTs should be embedded in a more general perspective on inclusion, development, and poverty reduction” (Servaes & Carpentier, 2006, p. 2). From a decolonial and border thinking perspective, the connection between the digital divide (technological poverty) and economic divide (material poverty) is obvious and hardly sufficient to explain the persistent problems of the kinds of poverty, especially technological poverty, associated with Africa. Technological and material poverty confirm the general pattern in the framing and ideological representation of Africa by the West. In post-Cartesian Europe, Africa is a place of empty spaces to be discovered by Europeans; there is no people, knowledge, culture, or even technology. It believes that “social and technological retardation of native peoples is wholly due to their inability to think physically and logically” and “a mind [that] is adamantly opposed to scientific thinking and technological orientation” (Kebede, 2009, p. 3). From slavery to globalization, Western modernity has always operated through the “Othering” of the non-Western subject. Africans are racially constructed within the Eurocentric discourse as “primitive”, “inferior”, “irrational”, “pre-logical”, and “child-like” whereas Europeans are “superior”, “civilized”, “rational”, “technological-savvy” (Ibid, pp. 1–12). This “Western attempt to degrade Africans

Rethinking the information society 141 has always required the prior [invention] and embellishment of the White man” (Ibid, 2009, p. 1). The Hegelian notion of a hierarchical order of human race is an inherent part of the discourse of coloniality (Bernasconi, 2003). In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness, considered in postcolonial analysis as one of the most racist novels from Europe, Africans are depicted as barbaric and primitive. They are without a language, a culture, and a civilization to lay claim on. Even with people, Africa becomes a zone of none-being in this attack of alterity. In the mind of the primitive colonizer and smart neoliberal colonist, physical and virtual Africa does not exist. These are empty spaces where Europe “supplants all else with its memory, culture, and even languages” (wa Thiong’o, 2009, p. 8). In the information age, this discourse of the primitiveness of Africans is reproduced through an information society that is devoid of African languages and cultures, a symbolic annihilation of African identities. The colonial motif of empty spaces is thus reproduced in the information society. The meaning of this void or emptiness cannot just be interpreted as denoting a digital divide at content and cultural level, but something deeper like digital apartheid. The digital divide is just but a symptom – not the neurosis itself – of other deeper divides that produce, nurture, and sustain it. These divides may not be ontologically valid truths, but a product of the discourse of coloniality embedded in the soul of a racist Europe that continuously produces inferior non-Westerners (Sardar, 2008). Thus, as observed by Du Bois (1903), the problem of the twentieth century [going forward] has not necessarily been that of capitalism and class conflict, but that of “the color line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea”. This is why the Black man does not have to find the digital divide, be it in Harlem, Lagos, or London – it follows him. Given the centrality of language to culture, it cannot be regarded as accidental that the languages of the colonial master continue to be dominant in postcolonial Africa online and offline. English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese all continue to be central in the everyday lives of the border not only online, but also offline as the medium of instruction in kindergartens, schools, and universities. This amounts to a whole African information society that is rooted not only in the coloniality of culture, but also that knowledge since “languages are not just cultural phenomena in which people find their identity; they are also the location where knowledge is inscribed” (Mignolo, 2003, p. 69). What therefore appears on the surface to be about the digital divide is in reality a knowledge and cultural divide where one race is portrayed as inherently more knowledgeable, intelligent, and creative while the other is not. As former colonial languages, Western languages in the postcolony also tend to enjoy greater recognition and status than the local indigenous languages. The “[formerly] colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards” (Fanon, 1986/2008, p. 9). According to wa Thiong’o (1986), coloniality’s primary goal is the exploitation of the wealth and economic resources in the border. The best way to do so is by controlling the “mental universe” through the domination of local languages and culture in the postcolony. The Internet has provided an

142  Last Moyo ideal tool whose efficacy doesn’t require the presence of the colonizer as markets, races, cultures, and spaces of the “Other” are remotely occupied and controlled. Language “as culture is as an image forming agent” and “our whole conception of ourselves as a people, individuals, and collectively, is based on those pictures and images [we form through language]” (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 15). Therefore, the domination of Western languages online represents the continuation of the coloniality of being and power through virtualization of coloniality. The exclusion of African languages expresses something that is bigger than the digital divide, it is the exclusion of the worldviews, identities, and the creativity of Africans. Without a language, Africa cannot creatively engage with the problems of the network society, even just to populate the information society with their language and culture, because as wa Thiong’o (1986, p. 3) contends, Eurocentricism “makes them see their past as one wasteland of none-achievement”. Eurocentricism culminates in a schizophrenic self, a coloniality of being that makes one live in a perpetual state of denial of being. Black inferiority, what Fanon (1986/2008) referred to as the “epidermalization” of an inferiority complex, is then internalized.

Border, hybridity, and the divide The other perspective to the dominance of colonial languages in the border refutes the view that foreign and colonial languages create and exacerbate the digital divide in profound ways. This perspective hinges on the theory of hybridization that is about the mixing of cultures (Robertson, 2003; Bhabha, 1994). There is always the local in the global and global in the local. This school of thought is its view of culture as existing in a constant state of flux, fluidity, and flows. Cultural identities are fluid with “in-between spaces that provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood… that initiate new signs of identity” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 3). This hybridization thesis overlooks the issue of power and ideology in culture. It depoliticizes language, culture, and technology. What it ignores is that as languages and cultures come into contact online and offline, they always do so in the context of asymmetry. The danger in the hybridization thesis lies in its blind spot on the workings of the coloniality of power, what Mignolo (2000) refers to as the “Western code” where coloniality hides its machinations behind a liberal ideology. It deploys sugar coated, catchy, and high-sounding buzz words like “cosmopolitanism”, “global village”, and “information society” to conceal its real intentions of exploiting the “Other”. wa Thiong’o (2009) observes that despite its rosy rhetoric, colonialism and coloniality always worked systematically through genocide (physical massacre), epistemicide (destruction of indigenous knowledge), and linguicide (destruction of local/national languages). When this happens, a whole civilization may disappear off the face of the earth both literally and symbolically. Every “ex-colonized people… in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality, finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation” (Fanon, 2008, p. 9). The absence of African languages online symbolizes the Western effort to destroy African languages as a precursor to the death of knowledge and culture.

Rethinking the information society 143

Conclusion: toward a pluriversal Internet This chapter painted a picture of an undemocratic, colonial, and exclusive model of the information society produced by a discriminatory Western modernity project. It argued that the gap that exists between the African languages/cultures and European languages/cultures online was too huge to be described in minimalist terms of the digital divide. What we call the digital divide may, in fact, be a product of a conscious logic of coloniality, marginalization, exclusion, and digital apartheid by the West. In that sense, the digital divide follows the contours of other deeper underlying divides like the race divide, knowledge divide, technology divide, and culture divide, produced as myths of European supremacy and African inferiority. Coloniality itself was shown not to exist in a stasis, but has chameleon-like tendencies to mutate both as a discourse and a structure. Hence, communication technologies in the colonial modern world system have always worked to service the coloniality of power and being through not only expropriation of wealth at the border, but also the othering and demonization of those who live there. As such, contrary to the claims of an information society that has great potential for democratization and development, the model of information society currently in existence was shown to reproduce, replicate, and reinforce social inequalities while also rooted in those inequalities. The use of languages of the former colonial masters online reproduces the coloniality of power, being, culture, and knowledge. To speak a language is to “assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization” (Fanon, 2008, p. 8). Similarly, to lose a language amounts to losing a civilization, a worldview, a sense of identity, and the creative capacity to change one’s physical and virtual worlds. The chapter contended for the decolonization of the Internet, which means democratizing it beyond its neoliberal character by confronting its various colonialities. Decolonizing the Internet also means re-conceptualizing it as a truly autonomous space for many languages, cultures, identities, and knowledges. This cacophony of languages, cultures, and knowledges goes beyond mere diversity, as it requires a transformed Internet that is pluriversal and multiversal as opposed to the universal domination of Western languages and epistemologies. Pluriversalism means European languages must stand side-by-side with languages from the border. This is already happening with languages like Mandarin in China and Korean/Hangul in Korea. This kind of information society is not top down, divisive, and colonially structured, but truly democratic, decolonized, multicultural, and lateral as an information and (communicating) society.

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11 Digital divide in Turkey as a non-western country Duygu Özsoy

Introduction When examining the problem of digital divide in Turkey, it is seen that even the access problem could not be overcome sufficiently compared to developed countries of the world. There is still a serious gap in Internet access according to urban/ rural area, men/women and age. The web increasingly provides opportunities to increase all forms of capital defined by Bourdieu for people who have high income and education levels. This offers a chance to persons who are in the advantageous section of the society to protect and develop their readily existing positions within society (van Deursen and van Dijk, 2013; van Deursen et al., 2015); online inequality intersects with the axis of offline inequality (Hargittai and Walejko, 2008; Correa, 2010; Robinsona et al., 2015; van Deursen and van Dijk, 2015; van Deursen et al., 2015). In Turkey, it is also observed that the gap that exists in all areas has rather well increased in favour of the sections which have more cultural capital when the content production of the web is considered. In this study, the conceptual framework of Şerif Mardin shall be referred to in order to examine the unique dimensions of the digital divide problem in Turkey. Mardin analyzes the westernization and modernization process in Turkey with a historical perspective starting from the Ottoman Empire and by bringing forth differences unique to such historicity and Islamic societies. Center-periphery analysis is on the very focus point of Mardin’s analysis. According to such approach, the center roughly assumes the principal role in the construction of social values and institutions; and effort is given to form the periphery under such principles. While the center approves western, secular values in Republican Turkey, the periphery is organized on the axis of traditional and Islamic values. Mardin deeply analyzes the social stratification, state-citizen, state-civil society relation in Turkey and the role of Islam within such processes. The mainstream digital divide literature investigates digital inequality via socioeconomic and demographic variables and quantitative methods and presents linear explanations regarding the inequality. However, digital inequality is a highly complex phenomenon and an analysis within the context is required to have a better understanding of this concept. It is necessary to analyze digital

The digital divide in Turkey 147 inequality phenomenon within the context of technology, culture, society and politics. Center-periphery paradigm is likely to provide a contextual framework. Center-periphery analysis is an approach that analyzes social stratification based on cultural differences rather than on class. Hence, individuals with different class interests might have similar attitudes regarding the process of accepting, rejecting and using of new technology because of similar cultural characteristics and values they have. In this study, by using this conceptual framework, two different Internet glossaries in Turkey, Ekşi Sözlük and İHL Sözlük, will be examined. Users of both glossaries are predominantly young, well-educated, middle class people. Although most of their sociodemographic characteristics are similar, their cultural values are different. Ekşi users mainly are from secular middle class, İHL users are mainly from Islamic middle class. It’s aimed to understand how cultural war between classes has an influence on web content production. There is a strong relationship between the culture, political structures of societies and technology. In this study, relationships between Internet and civil participation and political participation in Turkey are discussed and evaluated by using Şerif Mardin’s studies as a reference.

The conceptual framework of Şerif Mardin Mardin uses the conceptual framework of Edward Shills in center-periphery analysis. According to this approach, each society has a center. Center takes a principal role in the construction of institutions and values used in the reproduction of society and keeping the society together. Society’s central area is the center of the system of values, beliefs and symbols which manage the society. These values, beliefs and symbols are adopted and approved by the elites of society. Some societies have stronger centers than others and the material used while forming these centers varies substantially based on the societies. While the center in Turkish modernization approves western, secular, modern values, the periphery is being organized around traditional and Islamic values. Since the Ottoman Empire, the periphery is aware of having a secondary status in respect to culture. Center-periphery analysis of Mardin needs to be revised with the important changes experienced in the society of Turkey, especially beginning in the 1990s. Bipolar structure of cultural power conceptualized by Mardin has been pluralized, and on the other hand the elements accepted as periphery have started to come to the center. Also, it cannot be asserted that the difference between the center and the periphery is only a cultural difference. This difference also has a class qualification. The center creates the bourgeois and middle class, which embrace their own values. Communities, which embrace western secular values, have taken place on the privileged side of social stratification for a very long time. However, the periphery particularly sees itself culturally as the ‘other’ of the center. Nevertheless, political Islam has gained significant power since the 1990s; AKP (the Justice and Development Party) has become the leading party alone in 2002 and maintained its dominance uninterruptedly until today. The Islamist bourgeoisie have gained

148  Duygu Özsoy significant power and reach, which may compete with the western secular bourgeoisie, and at the same time a new Islamist middle class has emerged along with the support of those in political power. Accordingly, a conflict not only between classes, which advocate Islamic values, but also communities, which advocate western values, is experienced in today’s Turkey. Such conflict holds economic, social, cultural and ideological dimensions. The western secular community was in a dominant position in all capital accumulation processes for many years, and took its place in the upper tiers of social hierarchy (Savran, 2015; Balkan and Öncü, 2015). From the 1980s, an emerging Islamic middle class had an important advantage in increasing economic capitals by using its advantage of being close to power. Thus, a new in-class competition amongst the middle class also emerged. While the former middle class tried to protect its class privileges, the emerging Islamic middle class started to fight for strengthening its newly gained privileged position and transforming its economic capital into other types of capital (Gürel, 2015; Tanyılmaz, 2015; Açıkel, 2006). As the values of the periphery came to power with the AKP government, so did revanchist approaches against the values of the center.

İHL Sözlük vs Ekşi Sözlük Nowadays, using the Internet as a means of cultural capital increase is one of the important instruments to obtain social prestige. Internet glossaries are among the most important and widely used digital information sources in Turkey. The first example of Internet glossaries and also the strongest one today is Ekşi Sözlük. Established in 1999, it is an interactive platform with content such as information, experiences, observations, humor, comments, etc. about words, terms, concepts, events and people. Users are not required to write correct information. With these characteristics, Ekşi Sözlük has transformed the structure of a traditional dictionary. In this context, while the abundance of subjective perspectives provides the events, contexts and facts to be addressed out of a single fact perception, it creates decentralization. Ekşi Sözlük, which identifies itself by using the motto: “Divine Source of Information”, has become one of the most referred-to Internet information sources in Turkey. Being an Ekşi user is a source of prestige, a new status indication especially among young generations. Only people with a high level of cultural capital and advanced digital skills have the right to be a glossarist. It is expected that these users have a sufficient intellectual and educational background, a creative manner, and are able to comment on events with a unique perspective for advancing to their status as writers. Additionally, hypertext skills are required to be a glossarist. An attention-grabbing, successful glossarist is the one who is capable of using both conventional and digital literacy skills. Due to the extensive applications, the dictionary placed a pause on accepting writers; those who were waiting to be dictionary writers could not be included in this platform and therefore established different dictionaries in a similar format. While being a dictionary writer becomes increasingly difficult, this situation transforms the fact of being a dictionary writer into a more privileged status.

The digital divide in Turkey 149 Bourdieu states that some cultural rituals are more valid than others as these practices provide more symbolic power, and the valid cultural practices are actually determined by the higher classes of a society. Some Internet usage activities bring more prestige than others. It’s clear that being a glossarist is one of the prestigious Internet activities and is also one of the non-economic practices that reproduce the middle class. From the perspective of the middle class, the solution to the problem of class reproduction can be posed in terms of a preponderance of cultural resources owned (Balkan and Öncü, 2015). The way new Islamic middle classes in Turkey come to attain cultural power includes these kind of Internet activities. The struggle between the Islamic and secular bourgeoisie in Turkey is accompanied by a competition between educated elements of the other classes. There is a cutthroat competition between the former staff who had been raised in wealthy families, mostly in large cities, who generally had an open mind, studied in the best universities in Turkey, learned foreign languages at early ages, maintained a western life style (some of whom had been speaking even more than one foreign language), and the new emerging middle class layer. This second layer consists of people who have been maintaining a more Islamic, closed and conservative life, do not know any foreign language other than English, which they have learned later, studied in rural area universities and have been raised in relatively less wealthy families in smaller cities and even villages (Savran, 2015). While this religious new middle class has obtained an important advantage reaching social capital that would benefit them economically, they still feel incompetent about the cultural capital ownership and think that cultural power is still in the hands of the secular western community. Thus, the Islamic community continues with the struggle for cultural power, and the secular western community continues its struggle to protect cultural power that it has retained for years. This struggle finds its reflection in the Internet’s content production. A great majority of glossarists in Ekşi Sözlük are from the wing that has adopted western values of the middle class. Indeed, a fraction of people that is mostly comprised of educated, middleclass young people who adopt Islamic values are disturbed by this property of Ekşi Sözlük, and they have started İHL Sözlük and signed on as glossarists. İHL is an abbreviation of İmam Hatip High School (religious vocational high school). In Turkey, these high schools incorporate lessons related to Islam into the high school curriculum. These high schools are one of the most highly discussed issues in Turkish political agenda. The comparison of Ekşi Sözlük with İHL Sözlük is very significant in terms of revealing the influence of conflicts between middle class westerner, secularist and Islamic people in digital fields. This comparison is likely to more concretely reveal how important digital participation is for different fractions to reinforce their positions and gain prestige through digital participation in this period of conflict among classes. In 2009, a writer group who left the Ekşi Sözlük and named themselves as religious Muslims established a new dictionary in the name of İHL with the motto: “one and only Islamic dictionary”. Dictionary administrators stated the fact that “being treated as parasites”, being treated as “blacks” of Ekşi Dictionary,

150  Duygu Özsoy receiving no respect for their beliefs, having their entries with religious perspective censored by dictionary management and having their writer status terminated on these grounds are the reasons they left Ekşi Sözlük and established a new dictionary. İHL Sözlük, which explained their purpose as creating an intellectual platform with ethical concerns, insistently emphasized that the dictionary is not only open for Muslims and religious people but also to everyone who respects the divine. Mechul X: Other dictionaries do not talk our language, You need to write entries attacking the Divine so that your writer status is approved. You cannot say anything to Atatürk in other dictionaries, but you have to read silly anectodes about the prophet Muhammad. Ahmet Müsaadeetmez: I have been flown away from Ekşi Sözlük. If you do not comply with their opinion then you are out. You get attacked when you want to talk about your convictions. Hassan Sabbah: There are no Nietzsches and Oscar Wildes of this group which try to be enlightened. Would you want them dead? There is an intellectual deficiency, a status of being peasant in Islamic community. I am against being a peasant. Thus we have this dictionary. Ahmet Müsaadeetmez: There is an Islamic youth who go to cinema and concerts, and see art activities, this group cannot make itself heard. Even though I write about cinema in Ekşi Sözlük, some person sees my entry about prayer and says ‘you wouldn’t understand art’. İmhotep: We were in diaspora while we were writing in other dictionaries, and now we are home (Newspaper interview with İHL glossarist). Ali Murat Güven claimed in his article published in Yeni Şafak, one of the newspapers of the Islamic community, that lots of writers who had a religious perspective were removed from the dictionary by the administrators of Ekşi Sözlük, and the remaining religious writers had to write in the dictionary with a more controlled language to prevent the same outcome as the others. The columnist made some recommendations to Muslim religious young people about not leaving an important Internet platform such as Ekşi Sözlük in the hands of Jacobeans by making a critical reference to a Turkish modernization project: in my country, I am determined to not transform into scape goat of Jacobean class who have deemed themselves as the only owner of Anatolia since the Tanzimat, and to remind them of my presence in every opportunity, place and in every way. You do the same religious youth! I urgently annunciate from here; “Ekşi Sözlük” begins to take writers after a long break. Make sure to be a member of this important communication platform with the characteristic

The digital divide in Turkey 151 of being a reflection of common values of Turkish society and make your presence also felt there just as every front of the life. After the formation of İHL Sözlük, Ali Murat Güven wrote another article referencing his original article above and summarized the purpose of the recommendation he had given to the young people as promoting high self-confidence by leaving chronic defense psychology of Islamic community, and defended that this situation would be actualized with İHL Sözlük. According to the columnist, this is an intellectual breakthrough by religious youth for breaking out of their shells. İHL Sözlük had thousands of glossarists and extensive content. However, it was closed down by the website owners in 2012. It was reopened in 2015. However, this did not last long. The reason for closing it was not clearly shared with the public. It is highly difficult to reach glossarists because of their unanimous identities. It was possible to communicate with three glossarists who were unwilling to share their names when they were glossarists. The aim of this talk was to obtain information about the reason for the failure of the glossary. These people linked this failure with disagreements between shareholders and insufficient investments, although the website had increasing growth. They stated three reasons for its failure: the website constantly had difficulty in meeting the needs of its users, the technological infrastructure had difficulty adapting to new technology and there were political conflicts in the Islamist community.

Civil and political participation in Turkey and on the Internet Civil society discussions in Turkey take shape around the axis of strong state/ weak civil community dichotomy. The studies of Şerif Mardin are one of the most important reference sources of civil society studies in Turkey. Mardin analyzes the concept of civil society from a historical perspective based on the unique characteristics of the Ottoman–Turkish politics tradition. Mardin’s center-periphery analysis is the main axis that he uses in explaining state-civil society relationship. State structuring establishes a strong hegemony over society, i.e. central elements do not allow the society to form the principles related to its life. These principles are largely determined by the state. The state does not consent to share its power in this area with different communities of the society. On the contrary, it considers such attempts as those of an authority trying to regulate that which is stolen from it. In the relationship of state-society, personal rights and freedoms are not sufficiently institutionalized. According to Mardin, each society has a telos that is a dream they wish to come true. Mardin defines civil society as the western dream. The dream of European societies has not been the dream of Muslim societies. In Turkey, in contrast to the west, the public sphere has been fictionalized as an area built by the state itself, not as an area built independently, and it is shaped by central values and the peripheral elements have been excluded from the public sphere. Censorship,

152  Duygu Özsoy self-censorship, hate speech and insufficient struggle with the problem of digital inequality are the reflections of this situation on the web. These elements deepen the access and usage gap. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the concepts of political participation and citizenship are redefined. The young generation especially has the tendency to establish a more personalized relationship with politics and to participate in politics in ways different from traditional participation patterns such as voting, membership in political parties, etc. which are required by the old definition of being a citizen with a high sense of responsibility for political participation (Hargittai and Shaw, 2013). Empirical studies suggest a positive relation between civil and political participation with the use of social network sites (Boulianne, 2009, 2015). Social networks provide the continuity of offline traditional political participation activities in an online environment, and while making this easy, they reveal untraditional new online means of participation. Social networking sites decrease the cost for most different types of participation (Xenox et al., 2014). They give their members an opportunity to see information that the traditional media has overlooked. Then again, since this information has trickled down from reliable close sources, spouses, friends and relatives, trust and acceptance of it as reliable is increased (Bode, 2012; Wolsfeld et al., 2015). People are more exposed to heterogeneous discussions and dissimilar political views on the web (Kim et al., 2013). This interaction strengthens opportunities for political expression (Messing and Westwood, 2012; Morris and Morris, 2013). Political use of social networking sites increases both online and offline political participation and civil participation (Pasek, 2009; Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2013; Holt et al., 2013; Towner, 2013). Access to content about public issues from both traditional offline and online sources strengthens political discussion between people and increases civil participation. The inequality between the people whose political influence is high due to social capital in their offline lives independent from the use of the Internet and the people whose political influence is weak due to the absence of this capital can be compensated with increased use of the Internet and social media (Chan and Guo, 2013). The literature on Internet use and political participation show us that digital inclusion strengthens civil society and democracy. Therefore, one of the important aims of policies and regulations on digital inequalities is to guarantee active citizenship through digital inequality policies. Western literature regarding politics and digital inequality mainly attributes a positive role to politics. It is mainly emphasized that politics have a mission to bridge the digital divide and it is widely believed that politics are capable of achieving digital inclusion. The reason for this is western liberal democracy tradition that always gives priority to right over good. In this tradition, the role of politics is to guarantee the rights of an individual and enable them to actively use these rights. Western democracies regard Internet access as a fundamental right. However, the relationship between politics and society has a different form in countries like Turkey where democracy is not well-developed. Addressing the relationship between politics and digital inequality in a different context becomes inevitable as the political paradigm changes. In Turkey’s political tradition, the

The digital divide in Turkey 153 good is given priority over the right, the center decides what is good and imposes this perception on the periphery. Center periphery approach discusses how central values, institutions and government reproduce social relations. Thus, it also covers the political dimension regarding isolated and suppressed parts of the society. Consequently, center-periphery paradigm is capable of providing a conceptual framework. Politics have an influence on increasing the digital divide in countries with a problematic democracy. The use of social networks and social media is quite common in Turkey, and according to Information Society and Action Plan Strategy Report (2015), 96.2 percent of the Internet users in Turkey are using social networks. Also, it is common to use social networks for political purposes in Turkey. Especially after Gezi events, with the censor applied by the mainstream media, social media, especially Twitter, has become an important channel for the expression of political views and information. These problems in the offline field in Turkey, where the understanding of civil society has developed insufficiently, the tradition of public negotiation is rather limited, and the public sphere for years been considered equal to the State’s sphere, also have their effects on the online field. The public sphere has been under strict government surveillance throughout history in Turkey. The Internet, as a public sphere, is also under government control through censorship and surveillance. The President of the Republic, Erdoğan, has described Twitter and social media as a pain in the neck in a comment that he made in his prime ministry period, and especially in the recent period there have been many detentions and arrest cases because of sharings in social media on the grounds that they included insults to the president. In accordance with the 2015 report published by Alternative Information Association regarding the status of the web in Turkey, the discourse of hate spread through new media environments has rather increased today, and such discourse has become a natural event for ordinary people. Trolling aimed at political manipulation is used to create a discourse of political hate and a culture of lynching on Twitter. The organic bond between trolling accounts, particularly AKTrolls (dubbed such for their closeness to the AK Party), which created proAKP speech-acts and which target any social opposition (party, media, civil society organization or persons) and aim to socially discredit the same is obvious when their speech-act practices are considered. Censor and surveillance increase the access and usage gap. Users with developed technical knowledge on the web may have free web use by using software to enter prohibited web sites (particularly during periods when access is prohibited to web sites used frequently such as YouTube, Twitter) and to prevent monitoring of their web traffic, etc. since they have the information to avoid censorship and digital monitoring. The state has endeavoured to create policies and adopt policies to become integrated as an information society since the mid-1990s. Digital divide is seen as an important problem in the official strategy and action plans of Turkey for the future; it is emphasized that the Turks shall remain on the disadvantaged side of the global digital divide and the country shall lose its power of competition if such problems are not overcome. Big budgeted projects are adapted to particularly

154  Duygu Özsoy decrease access and usage gaps. Due to state traditions which Turkey has brought from the past, where decisions are taken from the central authority, the search for a solution on the digital divide is generally determined at the center, and the needs of the locality are not considered. The struggles carried out by related nongovernmental organizations on the free Internet as an extension of the tradition of a strong State and a weak civil society may not be determinative.

Conclusion Social stratification in Turkey has both similar and different characteristics to and from western countries because of the country’s own dynamics. As mentioned above, there are conflicts not only among classes but also in classes. In the digital era, new inequalities are added to social stratification. When the relationship between digital divide and social classes is analyzed, it is necessary not to ignore its relationship with interclass conflict. How does Internet use vary between groups with the same economic interests but different lifestyles and cultural backgrounds? For example, Nazife Şişman (2016), an Islamic writer, mentions in her book the possible dangers of Internet technology for Muslims. According to Şişman, information and communication technologies present new epistemologies. This new epistemology emerging in the digital era is considered a risk for Muslims. (Şişman, 2016: 19–24). In the same book, she states that people voluntarily display their private lives through social networks and this is against the lifestyle of Muslims (Şişman, 2016: 47–65). Hypothetically, these cultural concerns against technology are expected to have an effect on the gap in terms of usage and access. However, there is no empirical data regarding to which extent the gap in terms of usage and access is influenced by these attempts of Muslims to avoid technology. The Turkish Statistical Institute annually conducts research regarding access and usage by using a paradigm that represents Turkey and analyzes socioeconomic and demographic variables through this research. Data in 2016 indicated that fifty-six percent of people without access to the Internet stated that they had no Internet because they did not need it. It is still vague whether religious concerns play a role in this statement. Strategies of gaining prestige via digital participation vary depending upon these different backgrounds. How does status definition of these different groups differ, and how does the difference in status definition play a role in choosing online activities? Likewise, do different groups determine different strategies for Internet use with the aim of gaining political power? How does a country’s own political tradition influence the Internet’s function of political capital increase? The answers to these questions are still ambiguous. It is very clear that a better understanding of the reasons for and results of the digital divide requires international and comparative perspectives that deal with political, social and cultural differences. It is very vague to what dimension digital differences affect different societies. The conceptualization of the digital divide in non-western contexts shall contribute to researching these dimensions.

The digital divide in Turkey 155

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12 This question of the Other presence Theorizing online representation and the voice of the digital subaltern Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace Introduction The question of presence? Hello, I am Marilyn Wallace. I am a Kuku Nyungkal senior woman (knowing and holding my country’s lore and language) and care for a stretch of Nyungkalwarra rainforest country entangled with World Heritage national park in remote Far Northern Queensland, Australia (Figure 12.1). My parents shared with me traditional knowledge even though 1930s government policy rounded up our clan along with another 600 Aboriginal people, forcing us to live in poorly equipped mission camps established across the North. After our 2007 Native Title determination, we transformed ourselves into Aboriginal entrepreneurs, ‘Bana Yarralji Bubu Corporation’, to forge, fund and manage an indigenous land management rangers service and work with partners to help our people return to their country. With many collective responsibilities, our life is difficult financially, we are remote and have minimal electricity and digital infrastructure. Nevertheless, I have an email account set up by friends and have Skyped through colleagues. You can find me on my company’s blog, on Facebook, or as a digital teacher discussing my country’s seasonal calendars and climate change1. Yet despite all this rich online representation, my presence online is neither live nor connected. Digital presence, voice and representation is something Citt, Tania and I wish to discuss in relation to the digital divide. Who is representing who, what is being said and what are the entanglements and new power struggles in the digital sphere?

Figure 12.1 Kuku Nyungkal country in wet tropics region of Far North QLD, Australia (Hesperian, 2007).

158  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace This introductory narrative highlights the ubiquity and prevalence of the Internet in the lives of individuals, especially those who are remote or considered on the fringes. Today, our globally networked existences are harder to voice without the Internet. Increasingly subversive, the Internet – its impacts and materials of values – are evident within many social, economic and political arenas of society (Benkler, 2006; Grewal, 2008; van Dijk, 2012). Yet, at the end of 2015, over fifty-seven per cent of the global population, or 3.9 billion people, were unconnected, a phenomenon popularly known as the digital divide (ITU, 2015). The digital divide as a concept has provided a nuanced and evolving understanding of the changing nature of the digital sphere. While theories of the first digital divide focused on a distinction between being digital have and have-nots (Norris, 2001), recent theories of the second digital divide equate the impacts of unequal distribution of access and the use of the Internet in communities across the world (Zhao & Elesh, 2007; Graham, 2015; Hindman, 2008; van Dijk, 2012; Zook, Graham, Shelton, & Gorman, 2010). More recently, theories of the third digital divide focus on different modalities of inequality as a result of categories such as gender, age, race or ethnicity, education and other socioeconomic factors (Miller & Norris, 2016; Ragnedda, 2017). Nevertheless, few scholars have acknowledged the ‘presence’ online of those with limited or no access (see Kent 2008 and Gajjala 2013). Here, our introductory narrative suggests those on the fringes, disconnected or with fragmented access can have a presence online, though with or without knowledge, agency or consent. Observing this phenomenon and its incongruity with the digital divide concept, we identify the limited theoretical clarification on the real-world experiences that bring about this puzzling presence. This paper examines the digital divide concept and theorizes this presence through the postcolonial lens of the subaltern or the ‘Other’ (Gramsci, NowellSmith, & Hoare, 1971; Spivak, 1988). To ground this theory, we collaboratively examine the digital representation of Marilyn and discuss the structuring of the ‘Other’ in digital divide theory. Our intersectional approach provides insights on direct experiences amidst overlapping structures of power whilst opening us to consider the emergence of ontologically diverse and ethical ways of digital knowing, researching, accessing and benefit sharing. In the paper, we theoretically deconstruct relevant concepts of the digital divide and trace various intersecting historical contexts that may be reinforcing offline fabrications in online spaces. Here, intersections of colonialism, world-systems theory and standpoint resistance help us highlight cultural impacts and materials of sociocultural value emerging online. We then fold this conceptual framework into a paradigmatic case study, which allows deeper insights to emerge from our experiences of ‘Other’. Finally, we provide examples of agency and sociocultural engagement where opportunities lie for ethical intervention. We advance understanding of the digital divide by arguing the Internet is highly subversive because its networked nature has the ability to collapse the worldsystems inequalities separating the centre (core) and periphery, to the extent that the accumulating core no longer exists. Yet due to its charismatic yet imperious

This question of the Other presence 159 re-fabrication of existing structural inequalities, events of interaction and/or strategic resistance perform a cultural intersectionality of digital presences, namely an online variation of a subaltern. Our case study helps culturally contextualize theory around intersectional approaches to technological development and provides a post-colonial and critical contribution to understandings of the digital divide and Internet studies. Additionally, our research into digital subaltern theories may hold ground for further interdisciplinary community-based research. In the following section, we review relevant digital divide theories and provide a historical contextualization of Australia’s colonial past and relationship to materials of wealth, information and ‘Other’. We then deconstruct the concept of the ‘Other’ in digital spheres.

Background The nature of the digital divide Within social theory, it is widely acknowledged that access and political participation are linked to social stratification. Classic Marxist views argue stratification as the result of economic ordering through property ownership and the imposed control over the means of production by a ruling class. Weber theorized social structure was power and social ranking was influenced by wealth and social prestige accumulated through education and the application of learnt skills towards economic, social and political influence (wealth creation). Lack of access contributed to a decrease in political power, economic influence and reductions in various forms of material and social capital (prestige) affecting a person’s overall life chances (Ragnedda & Muschert, 2013; Weber, 1978). In the early 1990s, the digital divide developed as a metaphor to highlight stark gaps in access to digital infrastructure and literacy as well as the increasingly prevalent Internet have or have nots phenomena (van Dijk, 2005). The concept assessed inequality in the relationships of individuals and communities to socioeconomic participation, production, agency and the role of power structures online (Zhao & Elesh, 2007). However, the concept remained static, reinforcing a level of technological determinism that limited research to notions of access (Gunkel, 2003; van Dijk & Hacker, 2003). Initial research on the phenomenon suggested those left out of digital networks were left out of beneficial flows of life. Scholars such as Norris (2001) argued the effects of exclusion reinforced existing offline socioeconomic structures. Bach, Shaffer, and Wolfson (2013) later argued that such divides impacted an individual’s ability to access, influence and participate in digital capital production or participate in the information economy, thus limiting any economic, social and cultural gains. Yet within these theories, there is an assumption that being amongst informational flows was a positional good. Informational access has remained a key notion of the digital divide theory. Several scholars contended that access to and use of information provided

160  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace individuals and societies with the social and cultural capital to participate within the network society, thus engaging in and benefiting from production processes (Bourdieu, 1986; Gajjala, 2013). When projected onto the networked natures of the online – a divide affected a person’s access and participation in shaping the ‘flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organizational interaction, flows of images, sounds and symbols’ (Castells, 2000, p. 442). Yet, universal and ubiquitous access as a solution has failed to engage the implicit differences in how social groups, especially the marginalized, have framed, engaged, or chosen to leverage (or not) the digital sphere. Here, in line with Zhao & Elesh, (2007), we agree the digital divide is a socially constructed phenomenon shaped and maintained by digitally embedded cultural codes and patterns of social ordering (Castells, 2000, p. 446) and preempted by a corporate logic increasingly extractive in character and forestalling of societal change (Fuchs, 2013). Informational divides and the ‘Other’ The interplay between digital structures, agency and the ‘other’ may benefit from a North-South historic contextualization. As outlined by Cloke, Crang and Goodwin, (2005), during Europe’s proto-industrial era, many Southern Hemisphere parts of our world were systematically annexed through violence and then harvested of their material wealth and mercantile capital, ultimately accumulating in the indulgent markets of Europe. Within this expanding Eurocentric economic world system, centralized elites grew rich, prestigious and intellectually arrogant with cultural and racial superiority. Rousseau (1984) argued during this period inequality was justified as the progressive emergence of humankind from a ‘state of nature’ into a ‘civil state’ and ‘civil man’ (James, 1997, p. 54). Symbolized as non-rational, animal, backward or static in the imperialist imaginary, periphery and non-European cultures were gazed on as an ‘Other’ (Said, 1979) and represented as an object to be judged subordinate by privileged cultural value preferences (Kaplan, 1997). Enlightenment culture/nature divides and established stratifications justified discrimination against certain groups when providing access to infrastructural mobility and cultural literacy, which oppressed agency to affirm differing social, cultural, economic and political values (Beardsell, 2000). Within Australia’s colonial history, Aboriginality was fabricated through intersecting state identities performed in damaging ways. According to Watson (2009), the colonial project ‘denied and extinguished Aboriginality’ (p. 50) through violence and the ongoing privileging of the white settler. In unison, the insatiable demand of the market found ways to commoditize and accumulate Aboriginality as a prestigious and valued product of authenticity. Such contradictory and enforced overlaps in social identity worked to create Aboriginal subjects that were both dispossessed of connections to ancestral homelands and language, and re-fabricated for commodification. Flowing within colonial trade routes of the world, information was also a highly valuable commodity and driver of innovation. After the laying of the telegraph, accelerated transaction speeds across global information communications technologies (ITC) maintained the significance of information as a cheap-to-harvest

This question of the Other presence 161 yet highly valued resource (Castells, 2000; Eriksen, 2014). For those in positions of prestige and power, access to information ultimately reduced risk and uncertainty (Beck, 1992) whilst enabling periphery expansion and innovative exploitation by industrial centers of informational capital production (Fuchs, 2013). Both Castells (2000) and Escobar (2011) have argued separately that increased financial investment in the development of digital infrastructures has fostered an evolving asymmetric political economy. Haraway (1992) has argued hyper-capitalized accumulation of wealth was driving digital production and distribution discourses, whilst van Dijk (2009) contended the ‘sharing economy’ was framing network access as user agency, which in effect positioned users in ‘volatile labor markets’ (p. 55). Within these industrial contexts, the economic imperatives of ICT infrastructure ventures and software start-ups are entangled with the historical dynamics of representation, voice, agency and modes of production (Zhao & Elesh, 2007). Therefore, there is a need for digital divide conception to be entrenched in social and critical theory and to understand ‘social, cultural and psychological causes’ (van Dijk, 2005, p. 25) of digital inequality associated with informational power. Deconstructing the subaltern in online spaces Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci first wrote about the subaltern or the ‘Other’ as classes or lower ranking groups of people who were dominated by hegemonic elite (Gramsci et al., 1971). This domination denied the subaltern rights to agency and participation in the production of alternative histories and culture within the nation or hegemonic structure. Gramsci argued that the subaltern had the ‘same complex history as that of hegemonic classes’ (Louai, 2012, p. 5) but had been violently silenced by a submission to authority. For Gramsci, the subaltern was engendered and maintained through the forces of economic production and political formations that reinforced non-accessibility. Consequently, through the charismatic and legitimizing propagation of cultural norms as common sense, the subaltern was compromised. Rendered voiceless amidst the cultural language spoken by a variety of new social forces, subalterns are unable to control or selfdetermine representation (Berardi, 2015, p. 331). Gramsci’s descriptions of a certain consciousness and awareness amongst marginalized and disenfranchised groups in this position led the adoption of the subaltern into post-colonial studies. Given currency by Ranajit Guha, the concept was applied to the sociopolitical self-awareness amongst Indian peasantry and general participation in uprisings against colonial powers. However, Guha (1982), who positioned the subaltern within the dominance of capital, suggested ‘capital achieves the ability to speak for all of society; it is not only dominant as a class, but also hegemonic in it doesn’t need to use coercion to maintain its power’ (Guha, 1982, as cited in Chibber, 2014, p. 102). The subaltern later evolved with Gayatri Spivak’s deconstruction, who contended that the sheer recognition and acknowledgment of the subaltern reinforced the subordination (Spivak, 1988). The approach suggested that ‘by speaking out

162  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace and reclaiming a collective cultural identity, subalterns will in fact re-inscribe to a subordinate position in society’ (Graves, 1998, p. 1). The subaltern ‘receive political and discursive identities within historically determined systems of political and economic representation’, which largely deemed differing socioeconomic and cultural knowledge systems voiceless (Morton, 2003, p. 67). Theories of disjuncture and boundary within Human Computer Interaction studies suggest that code and structural design may globally reinforce subaltern voicelessness. Dourish (2007) has argued power structures inherent in Western technology design have created epistemological disjuncture for differing knowledge traditions, whilst Kent (2008) has argued ‘cultureware’ (software designed by a particular cultural worldview) has the ability to deter those of different cultural ontologies from participating. With participatory media networks becoming a major mode of social organization (van Dijk, 2012), the subaltern phenomenon and its capital value can be found generating at events of complex and fluid interaction between powerful social forces and structures. The complexities of connectedness emerge when misrepresentations or inauthentic voices of certain social groups and individuals are made politically visible. Gajjala (2013) suggests that the ‘connected and unconnected no longer represent the only kind of digital divide, and even when it appears to be the divide, it is more complex than that’ (p. 16). Connectivity complexity highlights the challenges implicit in the neoliberal notions of empowerment through ICTs. Gajjala (2013) further argued that such challenges exacerbate ‘political, economic and discursive hierarchies that have coded the subaltern as data’ into the very interface of the digital design that is supposed to rid these communities of these dominations (p. 16). To reiterate, the voice of the other made present in complex intersectional representations of digitally productive subjects can be deterritorialized and neo-liberally re-fabricated for repetitive commodification. Nevertheless, this fabrication is not without strategic resistance, as we will later discuss. In this section, we have reviewed relevant digital divide theories and provided a context of the Australian nation state’s historical relations to materials of wealth, information and ‘Other’. We then deconstructed the concept of the other in digital spheres. In doing so, we identified a characteristic of presence generated by an intersectional fluidity that to date has attracted limited theoretical clarity towards its manifestation and experience in everyday life. In order to explore this fluidity, we will now fold this conceptual framework into a paradigmatic case study, allowing insights to emerge from our experiences of ‘Other’. Methodology approach As researchers from different cultural backgrounds, we are positioned within a transformativist and indigenous research paradigm with ‘relational accountability promoting respectful recognition, reciprocity and the rights of the researched’ (Chilisa, 2011, pp. 40–41). To construct an empirically sound study, we collected non-randomized data based on an information-oriented data selection geared towards building a paradigmatic case (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. 307). Our

This question of the Other presence 163 parameters were restricted to elaborating on Marilyn’s digital online representations. We drew on the following methods: 1 Content analysis of website texts/comments, PDF newsletters referencing Marilyn; 2 Content analysis of audio-visual artifacts featuring Marilyn; 3 Semi-structured dialogue Skype sessions amongst collaborating authors. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of statistical and text-based information collected through an anonymous Google search. Information relating to the construction of Marilyn’s online presence was all noted and compiled for coding and analysis. Search results identified seventy-five results linking to the identity of Marilyn Wallace over a period of ten years. Representations mostly related to Marilyn’s environmental work via a cross-section of Government, INGOs, scientific researchers and tourists visiting the homeland. We found thirty blog posts generated by: International Indigenous organizations (eight); United Nations (six); private companies and government agencies discussing development projects (seven); visiting tourists (three); and researchers discussing Indigenous scientific research methods (two). The results identified a mix of communication types as shown below in Table 12.1. Across the data, first person voice in videos, academic articles and PowerPoint presentations were coded as informed consent and were present thirteen times (seventeen per cent). However, over forty results (fifty-three per cent) contained no participatory representation (coded as objectified third person referencing and no consent), and of these seventeen results (twenty-three per cent) indicated no direct representation of Marilyn, either through image, direct voice, verbatim quote, video hyperlink or indication of collaborative consent. To relationally contextualize these findings, we conducted two dialogue sessions to inform and reflect on our collaborative content analysis. Theoretical categories for analysis were applied individually and all results and grounds for agency were noted accordingly. The relational process evolved as shared knowing was iteratively reflected upon and fine-tuned with the viewpoint of trusted craftsmanship and situated usability (Kumar, 2014; Kvale, 1995). Table 12.1  Communications types amongst results. Blogs Video sites Academic article reports Databases Newsletters News feeds PowerPoint presentations Photo blogging sites Event programmes Official government documents Annual reports

30 10 5 7 6 5 4 3 2 2 2

164  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace

Discussion In this section, we situate the construction of Marilyn as ‘Other’, illuminating structures of dividing power that work to formulate the presence. By linking this presence to historical and divergent cultural perspectives, we analyze experiences of power asymmetries relating to the digital sphere, as well as evidence strategies for engagement beyond epistemological incompatibility. Finally, we provide new engagement examples where potentials lie for ethical reconfiguration. Situating Marilyn as ‘Other’ in the digital divide An Aboriginal woman in remote Far North Queensland faces numerous socioeconomic challenges. Sparse regional statistical percentiles on health, education and employment are much lower for indigenous people than they are for non-indigenous peoples. Only twenty per cent of indigenous households have an Internet connection and literacy levels are extremely low, estimated at fifty per cent lower than non-indigenous children in the same region (Australian Department of Broadband Communications, 2012; Queensland Department of Infrastructure, 2011). Certain government initiatives provide remote groups with free solar-powered satellite phone boxes with Wi-Fi access points. However, homelands in harsh remote environments often experience technology infrastructure breakdown, which due to poverty cycles may not take priority over other financial issues. Yes, our Wi-Fi is on, we have a Skype channel but the electricity is broken at the moment. We mature ones need to learn to use the Internet more often. Its use is very valuable to have in remote areas. It’s faster than the old ways of communication. Using the keyboard, using the camera, sending photographs through the scanner.

Figure 12.2 Active satellite phone with satellite dish, solar panel with Marilyn’s home office at rear. Source: Citt Williams.

This question of the Other presence 165 Not many Bama, (our regional indigenous people) use the Internet because of the literacy problem. Someone has to teach you and because where we come from, its cross-cultural … that’s where the learning curve comes in … the gap of knowledge. People have got knowledge, but actually downloading it from the knowledge to a data system is our difficulty. Since pre-colonial times of the Nyungkalwarra, customary lore and laws have upheld a complex bio-cultural governance structure traversing a network of family countries. This structure is relationally accessed through kinship-based private knowledge and stories protocols, together with an elders council for arbitration (see Rose, 1996). According to Anderson (1983), an indissoluble link between moral and subsistence knowledge and ecological consequences is felt if cultural and social regulations are not upheld. Though severely corroded in many places by colonialization and assimilation processes, social kinship networks still traverse a mesh of bio-cultural sui generis boundary systems (Black, 2011). Thus, access and literacy aren’t sufficient conditions to benefit from being online and are only useful when all in the collective social group have the necessary devices, functionalities and onto-epistemic framework connections to leverage the benefits (Shah, 2012). The Internet is not a neutral and unbiased platform, rather, we see in inequalities online that the subtle ‘re-embodiment’ of offline categorizations such as race, class and gender and social inequalities are reinforced (Nakamura & Race, 2007). Re-situating the subaltern in digital spaces One challenge is to determine the interplay between underlying power structures and the attribution of representation, voice and agency to the subaltern. Gayatri Spivak has noted that the ‘invasion of the so-called cyber-literacy in the realm of the subaltern sphere is frightening’ as cited in Gajjala (2013, p. 12), arguing that conceptualizing the digital divide through the subaltern lens offers a theory of change (Culler, 2007). Rightly, access is a defining factor that prevents selfexpression or engagement in the development of representational cultural knowledge, thus limiting diverse participation in dominant discourses (Spivak, 1988). Deconstructing subaltern agency, Gajjala (2013) suggests, ‘there is an interesting simultaneity of, partialness of and clearly assembled nature of [subaltern] agency [online]” (p. 11), with such agency also constrained by implicit and dominating power structures (Chibber, 2014). Voice gives ‘an account of one’s self through the equalizing interface of the social network online’ (Couldry, 2010 in Gajjala, 2013). When mediated through digital technologies, voice must negotiate a more organic existence where according to difference and choice, voice resists structural injustices, negotiates visibility and reasserts situated empowerment in decision-making. But, ‘like the subaltern himself [ed], those who set out to restore presence end only by borrowing the tools of [the larger] discourse, tools which serve only to reduplicate the first subjection which they effect’ (O’Hanlon, Masselos, Cooper, & Schwarz, 1988, p. 105).

166  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace It’s a bit scary to me though … with your voice, you go somewhere far away … it’s like your echo goes far and wide. In that situation on the Internet … how people use your knowledge in the media, it can also be wrongly portrayed. We suggest that conceptualizing the subaltern as a monolithic institution that is categorically visible, heard, represented or not is limited in its nuance. Rather we suggest a more fluid concept that accommodates for plurality and dimensionality. Intersectionality makes available a multiplicity of situated spatio-temporal patterns, norms, access practices and benefit arrangements (Winker & Degele, 2011). It draws attention to how a presence online may take shape through practices and encounters fluxing with everyday life. For example, in our case, immediate circumstances may involve: seasonal or kinship protocols of differential access, a self-determined resistance including ‘talking up’ to colonial legacies of privilege (Moreton-Robinson, 2013) or a circumstantive renegotiation of deceased persons’ information that has previously been participated within the enclosure of neo-liberal logics (Chibber, 2014). Currently, the Internet is imbibed with a logic congruous with the individual where any ‘notion of freedom is purely individualist and makes no reference to either people’s socially oriented goals or to the conditions of social cooperation necessary for any meaningful notion of freedom’ (Couldry, 2010, p. 66). If you are setting up a business, I believe it’s a key issue now, putting your business online. We are setting up a business on indigenous culture that's the way to go in bringing people to your homeland. There are people [ed] out there, and we need to work together by sharing our stories on the Internet. The role of the digital intermediary in bridging access needs has been widely discussed (Madon & Sahay, 2002; Sein & Furuholt, 2012; Srinivasan, 2012). Intermediaries are generally characterized as actors who are trusted and help users to access information and modes of production (Sein & Furuholt, 2012). Bruce [executive assistant] and I talk about it before he puts things online. We sit down, talk about it and discuss it. Go through the story and I say, yeh I agree, and then he puts it online for me so we have an agreement, a verbal agreement. Nevertheless, social hierarchy exploiting and appropriating the cultural capital of another or knowledge degradation is apparent in some cases (Kumar & Best, 2006) with benefits bestowed largely on the intermediary and network infrastructure provider. The Internet doesn’t simply extract itself from the human need to be social but is even more so inextricably entangled in existing categorical social inequalities. There are challenges in the way researchers use the Internet. Some will get their degree out of it, by writing their assignment just using your quotes or

This question of the Other presence 167 the recording part. It’s a good thing using your photo and your story as your backup … In some instances, a person who Bama have authorized to write their story later changed the story without consent … and then the negative impacts come back between the author and the storyteller. That’s why a lot of people don’t give their stories, especially indigenous persons, because they’ve lost faith. Collapsing core/periphery and resistance Within world systems theory, those on the periphery service those at the core. Referencing Foucault’s governmentality (1977), resistance or ‘acts designed to rid a people of its oppressors’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2006, p. 107), have nevertheless been critiqued as forming a semi-periphery subject enabling overarching structures of power to repurpose the vital energy of the resistance. Here, ‘neoliberal logics of empowerment’ (Sharma, 2008) prescribe user agency, deterritorializing knowledge through participatory modes of production (Gajjala (2013). With your business, putting more and more online influences people. Through the Internet, a lot of people are tuned into using the technology. They will go to the Internet and do a Google search. They find and read your story and then they will contact you if they are interested in studying the environment or want to know about what you do on land. It will be very valuable if someone is doing studies on indigenous culture. They can just go to search and just there they can find a lot of information because there’s not much information about Indigenous knowledge. Nevertheless, drawing from Ashcroft et al. (2006), we find potentials in multidimensional intersections that are necessarily ambivalent, contradictory and incoherent. This necessary entanglement of anti-colonial resistances within the colonialist machineries [which writers] seek to displace has been consistently thematized, consistently worked through, in ways that the unitary and logical demands of critical argumentation, at least in its traditional genres, have simply not allowed. (2006, pp. 109–10) And so, the purpose of this paper is to call for a re-imaging of digital divide as a fluid intersectional entanglement, not rigidly determined by a lack of cultural knowledge, access or skill. Instead, the intersectional approach offers insights on experiences amongst overlapping structures of power. Imagining instead a divide defined by its connectivity, its relational entanglement opens us to consider more ontologically challenging and ethical ways of digital knowing, researching, accessing and benefit sharing. To enable further clarity on this point, we suggest research in the following three areas.

168  Citt Williams, Tania Gupta and Marilyn Wallace First, richer understandings of the digital divide and its entanglement with historic injustices that systematically abuse cultural difference and the important societal values that difference creates. In particular, further work here may include historical injustices in preemptive and algorithmic media developments (see Dourish, 2016; Burrell, 2016; Verran & Christie, 2014). It’s about strengthening culture online the ‘right way’ and not allowing for it to be exploited by the wrong people, who don’t have cultural sensitivity … if business wants to use it, they have to contact us. The Bama knowledge protocols – we’ve got to have those rights. Second, collaborative exploration into situated Internet resistances and culturally sensitive digital innovations enabling ‘right way’ forms of expression. Borrowing from the ecological work of Plumwood (2007) and Rose (2004), we consider a ‘respect divide’ that works to develop an attunement in media ecology practices that respectfully privilege voice and culturally maintain protocols of differential access. The Internet is a white man’s structure. Designing it, you have to have a designer [coder] implement our cultural knowledge protocol into the story, to adapt the story to the Internet … adapt everything before it goes online. When you design software packages for Bama, they have to have those policies, procedures and authorizations. And finally, it may be that social, economic, cultural or informational affordances are not currently compatible with how value is generated amongst customary, bio-cultural as well as newly emerging or undisclosed knowledge systems. But as a dangerous mechanic of reason, any orthodox theoretical consideration of this incompatibility is to inflict violence. Relationally, we not only seek a research community striving for ontologically diverse structures for digital access and benefit sharing, but a community that rewards ethical and inclusive research and advancement.

Conclusion In this paper, we theoretically addressed the peculiar phenomenon of the ‘presence’ online of some disconnected with limited or no access. We examined relevant digital divide conceptions and worked to theorize this presence using the postcolonial lens of the subaltern or the ‘Other’. We engaged with discussions of the subaltern at the intersections of colonialism, world-systems capitalism and cultural resistance. We argued the voice of the ‘Other’ is made present through categoric and complex intersectional representations of digitally productive subjects that are dispossessed of territory and re-fabricated for commodification and prestige. This helped us to highlight intercultural impacts and to identify the deterritorialized ‘other’ amongst materials of sociocultural value

This question of the Other presence 169 emerging digitally. Through this, we worked to advance theoretical understanding of the digital divide beyond rigid determinants of access to a nuanced and fluid intersectionality performing certain offline fabrications in online spaces. We also articulated a digital subaltern concept that is fluid and accommodating of plurality and the high dimensionality of everyday life. To ground this theory, we collaboratively examined the digital representation of one of the paper’s authors – Marilyn – and brought to light the historical intersectional structuring of the ‘Other’ in digital divide theory. We provided insights from everyday experiences amidst the digital sphere shaped by intersecting structures of power. Here we identified the challenges of mediated cultural knowledge transmission, authority and intermediary powers, and the hesitation of cultural maintenance (delivered via high fidelity knowledge) in cultural exploitative arenas. This raised further work around historical injustices and respect divides in media ecology practices, challenging us with ontologically diverse ways of digital knowing, researching, access and benefit-sharing. Looking into the future, we imagine a world where access is not delimiting, nor are voice and awareness. What may be currently delimiting is the sense of agency, at an individual or group level, where those assumed ‘other’ are aware of the digital sphere’s inherent violence and structural injustices, yet through leveraging this fluid presence reach unthinkable potentials.

Note 1 This is environmental climate knowledge work that Citt (co-author) and I created together in 2008.

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13 The digital divide and classifications The inscription of citizens into the state Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou

Introduction Alongside the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies, new forms of digital divides and inequalities have also emerged (van Dijk, 2006; Norris, 2003; van Dijk and Hacker, 2003; Warchauer, 2003a, b; Mossberger et al., 2003). Broadly construed, the digital divide designates the division between those who are able to access, use, and take advantage of digital technologies and those who are not. Under this conceptual rubric, an increasingly large body of research has documented how digital technologies may reproduce and consolidate social inequalities (Ragnedda and Muschert, 2013; Mossberger, 2009), producing new forms of digital exclusion and stigmatization (Watling, 2011, 2012; Hjelholt, 2015). In this chapter, we argue that our current understanding of the digital divides and digital inequalities may be broadened and further enhanced through an increased attentiveness towards the ways in which norms and expectations are negotiated within governmental classifications and infrastructures over time (Bowker and Star, 1999; Edwards, 2003; Barry, 2001; Joerges and Czaniawska, 1998). The chapter introduces a framework for understanding and analyzing the historical relations between states and citizens with an emphasis on how these enter into different socio-technical constellations over time. We propose to frame the digital divide and digital inequalities in terms of classification theory and sociotechnical infrastructures (Bowker and Star, 1999). In this way, we will argue for an approach that takes its point of departure in the figure of the citizen as a historical and geographical subject that has been tied to the state through various technologies across time (Isin and Ruppert, 2015; Kitchin, 2014). More specifically, we suggest a model focused on the relation between technologies, authorities, and classifications. This framework will allow us to highlight how various classifications, mediating the state-citizen relation in different ways, have carefully allocated resources, responsibilities, and power in distinct and contingent ways over time. With this chapter, we seek to contribute to the growing body of research on the digital divide by providing a perspective that is sensitive to the complex ways in which citizens, states, and socio-technical arrangements overlap and become linked over time. It is in our view important to begin scrutinizing the historical

174  Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou developments that have guided and continue to steer digital infrastructures in contemporary societies. Recasting the digital divides in terms of classifications within the state-citizenship relation can help shed light on how norms and expectations are inscribed and hidden within the very core of our public institutions (Joerges and Czaniawska, 1998).

Digital divide(s) and citizenship While early research on the digital divide often took “access” as its main variable, analyzing how and to what extent particular populations had access to the Internet and digital technologies, research has matured significantly during the last two decades (Min, 2010; Sparks, 2013, van Dijk, 2006). Research has nuanced and expanded on what “being connected” might mean and entail. As Warschauer (2003a, b) already noted in 2003, the oftentimes quite binary division between the so-called “haves” and the “haves-not” fails to accurately grasp the multi-dimensionality of what it means to be connected. Being connected is not an either/or quality, but is rather made up of a complex continuum of variables, conditioned by, for example, the speed and stability of the Internet service in a geographical area. Indeed, referred to under the notion of a “second-level digital divide” (Hargittai, 2002; Min, 2010), contemporary research has stressed the social, economic, and cultural complexities of ICT adoption. Additionally, research has shown how the digital divide may reproduce economic and cultural inequalities as well as social stigmatization, insofar as the inability to utilize digital technologies will negatively affect the entrance to the labor market, possibilities for democratic participation, and psychological well-being (Mossberger et al., 2008; Mossberger, 2009; Warchauer, 2003a). Existing forms of marginalization and exclusion, particularly of disabled or “weak” citizens, may consequently be extended with the digital divide, as digital technologies may create new barriers and hindrances (Macdonald and Clayton, 2013; Watling, 2011; Watling and Crawford, 2010). Not only does this highlight how novel “links are being made between existing categories of social exclusion and new digital exclusions” (Watling and Crawford, 2010, p. 208), leading to the creation of new “digital outcasts” (Hjelholt, 2015); it also underlines how the digital divide has exclusionary repercussions that stretch deep into citizens’ ordinary lives. Digital inequality and the digital divide have also become key matters of concern for states and governments around the world. As so-called advanced democracies have increasingly digitalized core parts of their public sectors (Weerakkody and Reddick, 2012; Dunleavy et al., 2006), national citizenship has increasingly begun to converge with emergent forms of digital citizenship (Gurstein, 2001; Mossberger, 2009; Mossberger et al., 2008; Papacharissi, 2010; Isin and Ruppert, 2015). Today, being able to utilize key data-driven infrastructures provided by the state is seen as a capacity or skill that all citizens should and ought to have. Thus, “[a]ccess to online technology is [becoming] as binding to digital citizenship as national geography is to citizenship” (Papacharissi, 2010, p. 104). In this way, citizens are increasingly expected to be able to utilize digital infrastructures

The digital divide and classifications 175 and technologies in the standardized way imagined by particular national states. Digital citizenship is steadily being made into “the ideal of citizenship in the twenty-first century” (Mossberger et al., 2008, p. 140). Framing the digital divide in terms of citizenship is in our view productive insofar as it emphasizes the contingent and multiple relations between technologies, states, and subjects. Using this approach, this chapter seeks to understand the novel ways in which citizenship is becoming premised on the ability to utilize digital technologies, including the ways in which this may lead to new digital inequalities and digital divides. Supplementing existing approaches, with their attentiveness towards the multiplicity of social, cultural, political and global-economic variables that may constrain or condition the digital divide(s) (James, 2011; Bagchi, 2005; Min, 2010; Ayanso, Cho, and Lertwachara, 2014), this chapter shifts the focus slightly towards the historical relations between states, citizens, and infrastructures. How are subjects inscribed as citizens through technologies? What are the historical developments of such technologies? And how can digital inequalities be understood in a historical perspective? To answer these questions, we will in this chapter propose to build on and utilize classification theory, appropriating key concepts as a way of understanding the intricate nature of the statecitizen relation. Classifications and citizenship Classification plays a significant role in the coordination of human activities. Collective action within organizations presupposes shared category systems that make institutional priorities and relevancies visible (Mäkitalo and Säljö, 2002). In this way, classification is a part of daily life, as people divide things and other people into “kinds” as a way of making sense of the world. According to Bowker and Star (1999), large-scale infrastructures are in special need of classification (Edwards, 2003). Public organizations, such as welfare state bodies, need to classify individuals in order to be able to deal with them and direct assistance to them. Organizations cannot treat individuals as unique creatures: they need to classify them according to their organizational schemes following their own organizational or bureaucratic logic. Put somewhat simplified, classification systems function (among other ways) by dividing different forms of subjectivity into distinct and manageable categories. These categories can take the form of binary divisions – such as digital or non-digital – but they can also function through a number of discrete categorizations. Classifications are, however, not merely ways of labeling particular forms of subjectivity, as these codes also shape the self-understanding and subjectivity of those classified (Hacking, 1986). The codes assigned to particular individuals will influence the types of actions expected from these and frame further actions. As a result, classification codes can have at least two sides: they can be empowering and enabling for some, providing them with easier access and more transparent forms of governance, but they can also be disempowering and disabling to others. Just as digital technologies may be empowering for some, they can also

176  Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou serve to further stigmatize or exclude those already at the margins. All citizens who do not, for one reason or another, follow the rules established by classification schemes might find themselves marginalized by the underlying logics constituting the system – the “rules” of the game. Over time, classification mechanisms embedded within large-scale infrastructures tend to dissolve or become invisible (Bowker and Star, 1999; Star and Strauss, 1999). In this way, classifications become seemingly natural or neutral, a part of the way in which “things are done” within a particular organization or institution. By becoming invisible, however, the very logic and structure of these organizations also become indistinct. Seen in this light, the increasingly widespread delegation of responsibilities to various technologies has, according to Joerges and Czarniawska (1998, p. 372), had important implications for our understanding of the norms and expectations public institutions require of their citizens: [O]ver time, societies have transferred various institutionalized responsibilities to machine technologies and so removed these responsibilities from everyday awareness and made them unreadable. As organized transactions are externalized in machines, and as these machineries grow more complex and on ever larger scales, norms and practices of registering and organising people progressively devolve into society’s material basis: […] Inscribed in machines, institutions are literally black boxed. To study the development of particular classification systems over time, then, provides a way of re-historicizing these. It can act as a way of showing how that which appears as normal or invisible today is in fact the outcome of particular historical developments and decisions accumulated over time. As a result, we argue that using classification theory – as a way of rendering the invisible visible again – provides a productive point of departure for studying the changing forms that the state-citizen relation has taken over time. Understanding how citizens have been classified, categorized, and documented across time provides an opportunity to understand the various norms that have been tied to citizenship, including the ways in which such norms have also produced different forms of exclusion and marginalization. Classifications and public institutions: state-citizen constellations In order to study the changing classifications mediating the state-citizen relation, we propose a frame with three analytical dimensions, concerned with (1) the different technologies utilized in order to categorize and classify individuals, including their material constitution and possibilities; (2) the ways in which different authorities have overlapped with different technologies over time, with an emphasis on the governmental practices enacted by such authorities; and (3) the implicit and often tacit forms of classifications imbedded within different technologies, including the ways in which different categories shape citizens and state expectations.

The digital divide and classifications 177 These different dimensions, which overlap and interact in multiple and contingent ways, are summarized in Table 13.1 in what we propose as a model of the “state-citizen constellations”. This model is a heuristic device that should serve to sensitize us to the ways in which statehood, infrastructures, and citizenship converges, rather than an all-encompassing analytical matrix for studying neither of these concepts in isolation. It is a particular way of problematizing or posing questions to the digital divide and digital inequalities, and not an exhaustive framework seeking to theorize the complete set of relations between states and citizens. Its categories must be seen as a starting point for a particular analytical frame of mind. It is our contention that by analyzing how these different elements have come into being over time, we may begin to unravel the complexities of the state-citizen relation, including the ways in which infrastructures and technologies have mediated this relation over time. In doing so, it becomes possible to locate the digital divide and digital inequalities in a historical perspective, as the product and effect of particular norms and classifications inscribed and embodied in certain state-citizen constellations.

Civil registration in Denmark: an illustrative study To exemplify these arguments, the section provides a short illustrative narrative of civil registration in Denmark. We draw on existing analyses in order to showcase how various technologies have been used to mediate the relation between the state and its citizens over time, and how this has increasingly become premised on the production and use of digital data. Broadly construed, civil registration may be understood as systems that “collect and document data on individual identity, family relations and individual civil status changes” (Krogness, 2011, p. 87). These systems can be perceived as infrastructures of personhood (Szreter and Breckenridge, 2012) used to document and register whether and to what extent particular citizens should be constituted as legitimate persons. We have chosen to focus on civil registration for two particular reasons. First, as it is an important link between the state and its citizens, forming Table 13.1  State-citizen constellations. Category

Empirical questions

Technology

What kind of technology is used? To what extent does it allow for maneuverability and margins? What are its logics and possibilities? How are different technologies tied to different authorities? How are technologies tied to particular forms of governance? Who is responsible for the interaction with a given technology? How and to what extent do particular classifications lead to disciplinary and normalizing measurements? How does a given technology classify and categorize individuals? How do different classifications shape and influence further actions? What are the implicit normative divisions embedded within different categories?

Authority

Classification

178  Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou a mandatory component for maintaining national citizenship in Denmark. Thus, to figure as a citizen, individuals must be registered in the proper systems. Second, because the classifications and technologies used for civil registration have been subject to continuous changes throughout the history of the Danish state. In 2014, the law of Digital Post (“Lov om Offentlig Digital Post”) was affirmed in Denmark, which declared that all citizens in Denmark with a social security number must conduct all communication, as part of the state-citizen relation, digitally by logging into the “Digital Post” system. This law represented a fundamental shift in the more than 350-year-old Danish history of national registration, as being or not-being digital now became linked to national citizenship. Yet, to understand the implications of this change, including its effects on the digital divide and the production of social exclusion, there is a need to trace its genesis back to the early infrastructures of civil registration. From classificatory margins to schematized categories Civil registration has been an integral part of being a legitimate and legal Danish citizen for centuries. From the middle of the seventeenth century, civic registration was conducted systematically by injunction in official church books. Initially, these books were kept locally, and priests were in charge of what should be noted as relevant. As Krogness (2011) notes, “there were few instructions on how to make these registrations. Each pastor was free to organize his records as he wished. Some listed all events chronologically, others chose to list births and marriage separately, for example” (p. 92). From the beginning of the 1800s and onwards, however, official pre-printed columns were introduced, outlining with greater precision the information required. Yet, these books still entailed a “margin”: a blank field where the priest could note additional information. Within this formative phase for civil registration in Denmark, we can first of all observe how the particular technology used at this point – i.e. writing and church books – allowed for the inclusion of additional information concerning citizens. The possible classifications were, in other words, fairly open at this point, as the individual priest had a certain room of maneuverability to in- and exclude the information he wanted. Additionally, we can observe how the church – on behalf of the state – acted as the authority in charge of the given technology, holding the responsibility for maintaining and interacting with the technology. This also meant that in this point in time, civil registration was decidedly local: it was the local priest, utilizing media tied to their specific local storage, which had the responsibility and authority to inscribe subjects as citizens into the state. Finally, we can also observe how the room for marginal or additional classifications were increasingly schematized or standardized from the middle of the 1600s to the beginning of the 1800s. A more or less open format was increasingly codified into distinct and pre-printed categories and classifications. The main form of classification incorporated at this point in time had to do with information regarding the individual citizen: birth, name, marriage, and so on. With some variations, these core classifications are more or less continued up until and including

The digital divide and classifications 179 the present date. What does change, however, are the particular constellations in which these codes are embedded. From local technologies to central authorities In 1924, the National Register of Danish residents (folkeregisteret) was established and individual information concerning Danish citizens was registered manually on index cards (ernæringskortregistre). This meant that the responsibility was shifted from the local churches to the local municipality registration offices, which updated the information on the index cards continuously (Pedersen et al., 2006). However, by the 1960s, “the workload of the National Register had […] reached a level where it was difficult for these manual index card registers to keep up with the ever increasing demand for data” (Krogness, 2011, p. 104). Consequently, this system was only used until 1968 where the Central Civil Registration System (CPR) was established and all persons alive and living in Denmark were registered centrally (Pedersen, 2011). The register includes a unique personal identification number, name, gender, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship, identity of parents, and continuously updated information on vital status, place of residence, and spouses. These classifications were, to a large extent, carried on from earlier periods. This new register, however, entailed a shift from the local municipalities holding the authority to the Ministry of Interior’s Secretariat for Individual Registration being the main authority in charge. With the growing capabilities of electronic storage and technologies, CPR also introduced a new technology: With the introduction of CPR, the 1340 municipal National Registration offices began serving this single electronic system, and CPR, in turn, gradually took over from the National Register duties such as supplying data to the tax authorities, to other public authorities, and to private citizens, as well as supplying statistical information, preparing election rolls, etc. (Krogness, 2011, p. 109) Thus, in the period 1924–1968, we can observe several different changes in the state-citizen constellation. First of all, the period includes the incorporation of two different technologies: from manual index cards in 1924 to a central electronic system in 1968. This also means that the strictly local character is increasingly being made into a national one. Through shifts in the technologies used, civil registration goes from being a local endeavor to being a national system and means of classification. With these technological changes, the authority in charge also shifted as outlined above: from local municipalities to the state itself. This shift can be seen as a centralization of civil registration, which entailed the replacement of the local registers with a national one. However, what is important to bear in mind is that the classifications utilized by these new systems largely stayed the same. The standards developed in the formative phase of civil registration had, in their own way, become sedimented into the practice of documenting and categorizing citizens.

180  Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou Emergent classifications and digitalization The CPR register continues to work up until this day, although it has been adopted to match the growing complexity of the public sector on an on-going basis. Thus, “[e]volved over time, the CPR system is an amalgam of solutions at various stages of technological development” (Krogness, 2011, p. 111), with one of the latest additions being a wish to partially outsource “the management of private civil status data” (ibid.). However, while the CPR system itself has been relatively stable, political changes in and around the system have introduced new forms of classification. Since 2001, shifting Danish governments have spent large amounts of economic resources on fully digitalizing the Danish welfare state and public sector. The aim has been to take advantage of digitalization as a means of upgrading and optimizing the public sector, while providing the optimal conditions for the market to grow and prosper. It was against this backdrop that Digital Post, as both a legal measurement and a concrete technological infrastructure, was introduced in 2014. This regulation declared that all citizens in Denmark with a CPR number were obliged to conduct all communication digitally by logging into the system using a unique code tied to their personal number. Legislations had been made since 2001 in order to make public sector institutions use emails and to make citizens address the public sector via mail (Henriksen and Damsgaard, 2007). Digital Post was the culmination of a decade of new e-government policies and public sector reforms. With the law of Digital Post, the communicative relation between the state and its citizens became mandatorily digital. Every citizen in Denmark over 15 years of age was now expected to be “digital by default”. Although not modifying the technologies used for civil registration directly, this mandatory digitalization of the state-citizen relation did have consequences for the classifications tied to national citizenship. With Digital Post, an emergent form of classification appeared: citizens were now classified in terms of whether they were “digital” or “non-digital”. Thus, for the first time in Danish history, the distinction between those who were able to utilize pre-defined state infrastructures and those who were not became inscribed into the very fabric of civil registration and national citizenship. While citizens would not lose their legal status or formal rights if they were not digital, this classification nonetheless came to be attached or inscribed into their documentation. The introduction of this new classification also signified a broader normative project engaged in by the state. By making it mandatory for citizens to communicate through digital infrastructures, the state had continuously sought to premise citizenship on actions and activities performed by citizens. Rather than citizenship being a formal-legal status endowed to particular subjects, it has instead become premised on the production of data and the citizen’s ability to utilize and communicate through digital technologies. Certain actions and digital skills were from this point on required of the citizen. At the same time, the social welfare state would not actively seek out citizens in order to offer support functions if they were unable to use the Internet. Rather, the citizen had to actively approach

The digital divide and classifications 181 the state – within a physical citizen service center – and apply for being placed in the so-called non-digital category. Those who were not able to receive digital mail had to show up physically and declare that they could not receive digital mail. Both legally and in the strategies pursued by the state, being digital was explicitly constructed as the desirable option. The introduction of this new form of classification played an important part in several other respects. First of all, while the social welfare state would not seek out those unable to utilize Digital Post, it did offer support functions to citizens who were unable to use the Internet in order to transform these into “the norm”. Being classified as non-digital became not only a means of governance, but also led to a number of disciplinary measurements attempting to transform the citizen into the normatively desirable option. In this way, Digital Post, and the classification of citizens, led to new governmental practices that would rectify and normalize those falling outside the pre-established categories. Second, the classification of citizens became directly tied to their ability to maintain social welfare benefits. Unemployed citizens, for example, had to log on to a particular website and register information on a continuous basis in order to maintain their unemployment benefits. Conceived in this light, authority not only came to signify being in charge of collecting and registering information. It also became linked to new governmental techniques with an overtly normalizing and disciplinary function.

Discussion The Digital Post system, and the classifications it led to, signified a fundamental shift in the state-citizen constellation. From this point on, the ability to utilize digital technologies was framed as a necessary component of national citizenship. In its own way, this shows how codes, algorithms, and networks are increasingly shaping the relationship between the citizen and the state, and that citizens are increasingly expected to serve themselves and be able to utilize digital technologies. These changes are reflected in the various state-citizen constellations governing civil registration over time: From a strictly manual system, governed by local Church authorities without the need for the active involvement of the citizen to first a manual system governed by local municipalities within strict pre-defined categories to then a centralized system, which finally introduced the ability to utilize digital technologies as an integral part of documenting citizenship. The increasingly widespread assumption that citizens ought to be digital has, in other words, materialized itself as a change in the very classifications used to inscribe, register, and classify Danish citizens. This short illustrative study showcases how access first and foremost becomes an important variable from 2014 in the context of broader political efforts to digitalize the state. It is at this point that the citizen is expected to be able to utilize digital infrastructures, and it is at this point that those unable to access or competently use digital platforms start “falling” outside the norms expected by the state. These expectations are further complicated by the fact that throughout the history of civil registration, the room for marginal or additional information

182  Morten Hjelholt and Jannick Schou has effectively been erased. Thus, while civil registration started out as a flexible and somewhat undefined manual technology of writing, it has increasingly been turned into a set of narrowly defined and clearly outlined categories. The range of possible classifications have been standardized and centralized within a common national framework. While this may optimize work processes, it has effectually erased the room for marginal information. Those who do not fit in with the normative expectations of the system will find themselves marginalized or the recipients of disciplinary measurements, as the technologies used for civil registration are unable to handle information falling in-between categories. Overall, we want to argue that the turn towards access must be understood in conjunction with the outlined changes in the technologies, authorities, and classifications. These changes have been tied to a political logic that has continuously sought to standardize and rationalize the categories through which citizens may be classified, centralize the process of gathering and registering data, and tie citizenship to the active production of data through the implementation of new forms of classifications. The digital inequalities that may result from the coupling between access and national citizenship are thus a historical construct that have taken shape over time by the inscription and black boxing of various technological logics and organizational classifications. While the consequences of this turn towards mandatory digital self-service are yet to be explicated – as there is yet to be presented any systematic research that investigates the digital inequalities caused by the system – these should in our view be historicized within the reconfigurations in the state-citizen constellation outlined above.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have proposed a frame for understanding the relation between states, citizens, and infrastructures as they form and alter over time. Drawing on classification theory, rooted in science and technology studies (Bowker and Star, 1999), and probing the heuristic concepts of technology, authority, and classification, we have offered a way of placing the figure of the (digital) citizen at the center of research on the digital divide and digital inequalities. Rather than focusing strictly on access, skills, and motivations for use, we have instead sought to provide a framework that can historicize these concepts in terms of their wider contextual relation to developments and practices of governance. While the illustrative example provided here, concerned with civil registration in Denmark, has been severely limited in terms of scope and depth, it does highlight how tracing the interrelations and subtle shifts in the state-citizen constellation may help us to understand not only why the digital divide emerges, but also how it coincides with particular political discourses, organizational forms, and technological codes. The turn towards state-citizen constellations and classification theory as an analytical outlook allows us to place the digital divide within a complex constellation of “systems of thought, legalities, materialities and infrastructures, practices, organisations and institutions” (Kitchin, 2014, p. 185). In this sense, it can serve as a supplement or addition to existing takes on the digital divide and

The digital divide and classifications 183 digital inequalities. By showing how present expectations have arisen through particular historical developments, it may bring out the underlying conditions that have provided the grounds for digital inequalities to emerge in the first place. That being the case, however, an exclusive focus on state-citizen constellations in and of themselves is also severely limited. To our mind, such a view needs to be backed up by solid empirical evidence, combining detailed ethnographic and archival case studies with expansive quantitative research mapping the interrelation between the digital divide and socioeconomic, cultural, physiological, and political factors. While the illustrative case used in this chapter has first and foremost had a specific national scope, it is our hope that the model of state-citizen constellations may be expanded to a wide range of other global settings. By including relatively open analytical categories, which allow for a certain interpretative flexibility, our model may prove useful as a sensitizing tool, allowing for transnational and -regional comparisons focused on variations and commonalities across different contexts. In this way, using our proposed set of variables may contextualize and historicize how the digital divide and digital inequalities have operated and emerged within specific cultural and political contexts. By bringing these contextual elements back into view, it may be possible to get an enhanced understanding of how and why digital inequalities have proven to be such a persistent and widespread problem across widely different contexts.

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14 Gendered cyberhate A new digital divide? Emma Jane

Introduction The Internet’s rapid growth and its uptake in almost every aspect of daily life has delivered countless social benefits. But the cybersphere’s self-publishing opportunities and networked design are offering people new ways to attack each other with unprecedented venom and impunity. While a number of social groups are particularly vulnerable to and are frequent targets of such abuse, this chapter focuses on cyberhate that is directed at women and that is gendered in nature. It uses feminist theory, legal scholarship, and philosophical considerations of “hard choice” scenarios and coercion to examine the threat posed to online participation and digital citizenship by dramatic increases in harassment, abuse, and threats targeting women on the Internet and social media platforms. This chapter responds to the following problematic: do the gendered dimensions of contemporary cyberhate constitute a new digital divide? I answer this question in four steps. First, I sketch extant digital divide literature to provide context. Second, I provide a brief introduction to gendered cyberhate as manifest in sexualized vitriol and threats on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook from the late 1990s until the present day. Third, I assess the impact of this material on targets, with particular emphasis on the way some women are withdrawing from or altering their patterns of use of the Internet. Fourth, I make the case that, while women’s decisions to change the way they use the Internet in these contexts are rational choices, they come about as a result of coercion. My overall conclusion is that the impact of gendered cyberhate on targets is impeding online participation and digital citizenship and therefore does constitute a new dimension of existing, gender-related digital divides. This chapter is based on an ongoing, mixed-method, and multi-modal research project into gendered cyberhate. The latter is dedicated to mapping and analyzing the nature, manifestations, prevalence, etiology, and ramifications of misogyny online. While my formal research into this topic commenced in 2011, I have been archiving examples of online hostility involving death or rape threats, and/ or particularly sexually explicit rhetoric, since 1998. These archives have been assembled using screen shots and web captures, and deploying methodological approaches from Internet historiography. Since 2011, I have also used the

Gendered cyberhate 187 “Google Alerts” service, which provides a daily digest of content from various online sources. I use nine alerts searching for sixteen potentially relevant words or phrases. Since 2015, a specific aspect of my research – that is, my investigations into the impact of cyberhate on the way women use the Internet – has received funding from the Australian government. As such, in addition to the archived material described above, this chapter is informed by the preliminary findings from fifty indepth, semi-structured, qualitative interviews with gendered cyberhate targets that were conducted for this government-funded project. I interviewed these women – aged between 19 to 52 – over the course of 2015 and 2016. Theoretically, my hermeneutic is interdisciplinary and works across feminist and gender theory, philosophy, and cultural and media studies. Before continuing, I will briefly address some issues relating to terms and definitions. In previous work, I have used the term “e-bile” to capture an array of discourses and practices that have historically been designated via terms such as “cyberbullying”, “cyberstalking”, “trolling”, and, most commonly, “flaming” (Jane, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2017). In recent years a range of other terms – including “technology violence” (Ostini & Hopkins, 2015), “technology-facilitated sexual violence” (Henry & Powell, 2015), and “cyber violence against women and girls” (cyber VAWG) (UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015) – have been deployed to describe different aspects of what is essentially the same group of phenomena. While definitions and terms of inquiry are important, my argument is that the urgency of the gendered cyberhate problem is such that continuing what has already been an extended scholarly conversation about definitional precision and online hostility is not the best use of intellectual energy at this time (Jane, 2014a, 2014b, 2015). In this chapter, therefore, I note simply that I will be using the terms “gendered cyberhate”, “gendered e-bile”, and “cyber VAWG” interchangeably to refer to ostensibly hostile material: that is directed at girls or women; that involves death or rape threats, and/or particularly sexually explicit or violent rhetoric; and that circulates via the Internet, social media platforms, or information and communications technology (ICT), although may also include offline dimensions.

Digital divisions In “A declaration of the independence of cyberspace” from 1996, the cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow declared the virtual world to be one that all could enter “without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth”. Unfortunately, early hopes that information technology would act as a “great leveler” (Losh, 2003, p. 85) have proved to be unfounded. Online domains are increasingly reflecting – and in some cases amplifying – the social, economic, and cultural inequalities of the offline world, in terms of markers such as race, class, and gender (Bimber, 2000; Cooper & Weaver, 2003; Cooper, 2006; Nakamura & Chow-White, 2012; Kettrey & Laster, 2014). Research on

188  Emma Jane gender and Internet access, however, has produced mixed and at times contradictory results. Some claim that gender differences in computer and Internet usage have narrowed, disappeared, or even reversed in nations such as the United States and Britain (Ono & Zavodny, 2004; Dutton, Blank, & Groselj, 2013, esp. p. 22). Others argue that suggesting the gender digital divide no longer exists is a case of “misplaced optimism” (Clark & Gorski, 2002, pp. 36–37, 39), and that the quality and nature of Internet access and use remains “heavily gendered” (Selwyn, Gorard, & Furlong, 2005, p. 20). These seemingly inconsistent research findings likely relate to different ideas about what online equity looks like and how it should be measured. Thus, figures relating to material access to technology and total time spent using the Internet may give the impression that the online experience is roughly the same for females as it is for males. Yet the use of more textured measures shows that women and girls continue to suffer disadvantage online even if they have access to the requisite hardware, software, and Internet connections. These sorts of approaches comport with broader trends in digital divide scholarship in terms of a shift away from measuring cyber inequalities solely or primarily in terms of physical access to computers and modems, and a shift towards the examination of patterns of skills and use (van Dijk & Hacker, 2003; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2014). Researchers have found that women are more likely to be late rather than early adopters of Internet technology, and tend to have less confidence in their proficiency and to perform fewer activities online than men (Liff & Shepherd, 2004; Haight, Quan-Haase, & Corbett, 2014). There also remain gender differences in the frequency and intensity of use (Ono & Zavodny, 2002, p. 11). Further, Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw identify “profound gender inequalities” in terms of cultural production on the Internet (specifically in terms of contributions to Wikipedia) (2015, p. 424). Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of cyber hostility and hate in terms of understanding the gender digital divide. A notable exception is the work of Susan C. Herring, although the types of communication she identifies as being sexist, offensive, and even “violent” towards women are relatively mild and apparently quite rare (see: Herring, 2002; Herring et al., 2002) compared to contemporary iterations. Valuable work has also been done by Christine Clark and Paul Gorski, who have identified hostile Internet content and cyberculture as a barrier to women’s full participation in online spaces (2002, p. 31). Their focus, however, is predominantly on data collected during the 1990s, a period when gendered cyberhate was relatively limited in terms of prevalence and rhetorical noxiousness (Jane, 2017). Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in gendered cyberhate, especially from feminist legal scholars. The work of Danielle Keats Citron (2014a, 2014b, 2014c) is particularly notable in this respect. This literature has, however, foregrounded legal dilemmas and remedies, whereas my work looks at online phenomena which may not be illegal, yet may still have a profound impact on gender equity online. My aim with this chapter, therefore, is to update existing digital divide scholarship by focusing on a new problem from a new perspective.

Gendered cyberhate 189

Gendered cyberhate My previously published research shows that gendered cyberhate grew in prevalence over the first decade of the twenty-first century and increased markedly from around 2010 (Jane, 2014a, 2014b, 2017). Since the 2014 attacks on women in gaming and tech known as “GamerGate”, rape threats and sexualized vitriol have become, as one UK columnist recently observed, a “normal and everyday” part of using the Internet for women (Ellen, 2015). Multiple anecdotal reports of gendered abuse and harassment (Doyle, 2011; Criado-Perez, 2013; Sandoval, 2013; Hess, 2014) are supported by a growing number of empirical studies. In September 2015, for instance, the United Nations issued a “world-wide wake-up call” in response to research showing that seventy-three per cent of women and girls have been exposed to or have experienced some form of online violence (UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015, p. 2). Synthesizing a number of studies on the topic, the UN report also acknowledged that women are twenty-seven times more likely to be abused online than men; that sixty-one per cent of online harassers are male; that eighteen per cent of women in the European Union (EU) have experienced a serious form of cyber violence since the age of 15; and that women aged between 18 and 24 are at particular risk (UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015, p. 15). There is no sign that the volume of gendered e-bile is diminishing. In fact, the UN has warned that – without urgent action – the increasing prevalence of cyber VAWG risks “producing a 21st century global pandemic with significant negative consequences for all societies in general and irreparable damage for girls and women in particular” (UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015, pp. 6–7). I will now outline some of the negative consequences and harm that can already be observed as a result of gendered cyberhate.

Impact on targets Women who are targeted for online harassment and abuse suffer psychologically, socially, professionally, economically, and politically. The increasing incidence of attacks which begin online and then spill offline is also putting women at risk of direct physical injury. Gendered cyberhate with offline dimensions includes the increasingly common practice of “doxing”. This refers to the circulation of a target’s personal details online, often accompanied by an explicit or implied incitement to others to attack the named person. “Revenge porn”, meanwhile, is a term used to describe the uploading of sexually explicit material – usually of a former female partner – without the consent of the pictured subject. When combined with doxing, this practice effectively crowd-sources harassment in that it can result in women receiving multiple online and offline contacts from strangers seeking sex. Regardless of whether gendered cyberhate plays out solely online or whether it also has offline dimensions, women who have been attacked, threatened, and

190  Emma Jane harassed via the Internet describe feelings of anxiety, shame, shock, fear, and violation. Some report mental health problems such as anxiety disorder, depression, panic attacks, agoraphobia, and self-harm. Cyberbullying and sexual humiliation online – including the posting of sexual assault images on the Internet – have also been linked to a number of suicides (Citron, 2014, pp. 11a, 149, 188). For a personal account of the emotional impact of gendered cyberhate, we can look to the case of the UK feminist Caroline Criado-Perez, who was inundated with death and rape threats in 2013 after spearheading a campaign which saw the Bank of England review its decision to have an all-male line-up on banknotes. Over the course of a single weekend, police gathered enough rape and death threats against Criado-Perez to fill 300 A4 pages. These included Twitter messages such as “KISS YOUR PUSSY GOODBYE AS WE BREAK IT IRREPARABLY”, and “If your friends survived rape they weren’t raped properly” (Jane, 2014, pp. 3b, 563). Criado-Perez says that, during the worst of the onslaught, she struggled to eat, sleep, or work. Eventually she broke down completely, “utterly overwhelmed” (2013). In addition to emotional distress, gendered cyberhate extracts a professional and financial toll on targets. Some women are subject to group campaigns to have them fired (Doyle, 2011), while others find the online environment so hostile, they withdraw from it completely. This may involve walking away from networking and marketing opportunities, and sometimes from entire careers. An example is Kathy Sierra, gendered cyberhate’s first “big name” target. In 2007, Sierra – who taught programming and wrote about design and coding – was “one of the most visible women in tech” (Sandoval, 2013). She was doxed and sent multiple rape and death threats online after Internet users objected to a post in which she said that – even though she did not moderate comments on her own blog – she supported those who did moderate comments. After receiving a deluge of messages such as, “fuck off you boring slut . . . i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob” (cited in Walsh, 2007), Sierra retreated not only from public life on the Internet, but from public life in general. In an online apology to the organizers and attendees of a conference she withdrew from at the last minute, Sierra wrote that she was at home with the doors locked in terror: “I have cancelled all speaking engagements. I am afraid to leave my yard. I will never feel the same. I will never be the same” (cited in Harris, 2007; cited in Walsh, 2007, emphasis in original). Gendered cyberhate can also destroy women’s reputations in a way that has ongoing professional repercussions. Citron has shown that revenge porn can lead to the immediate dismissal of women from their jobs, as well as to a dramatic lessening of their chances to secure new positions. The latter is because the vast majority of employers use search engines to screen job applicants and people are simply not interviewed or hired if “unsuitable” material surfaces about them online (Citron, 2014b, 2014c). At the very least, dealing with cyberhate is timeconsuming and productivity-sapping for targets. Writing of her lengthy attempts to bring a cyber stalker to justice, the American journalist Amanda Hess observes that: “Every time we call the police, head to court to file a civil protection order, or

Gendered cyberhate 191 get sucked into a mental hole by the threats that have been made against us, zeroes drop from our annual incomes” (2014). Gendered cyberhate can have a silencing effect in that targets may decide to self-censor and/or to avoid topics and debates they expect will attract abuse. This was certainly a recurring theme in my research interviews. A number of my subjects said they had ceased or curtailed their public comments on subjects such as feminism, gender, race, immigration, parenting, climate change, and (especially) sexism in video games because they or their families had been attacked, or because they had witnessed attacks on others. A high profile example of this type of silencing involves the feminist writer Jessica Valenti who, in 2016, announced she was withdrawing from social media because a rape and death threat had been directed at her five-year-old daughter (Morris, 2016). Valenti’s decision came after an analysis of 70 million remarks posted to The Guardian’s comment threads found that Valenti was the writer targeted for the largest number of objectionable comments (Valenti, 2016). Women are also changing the way they represent themselves and interact with others online in an attempt to avoid cyberhate. Citron, for instance, notes that seventy per cent of females who play multiplayer online games play as male characters to avoid sexual harassment (2014a, p. 18). One of my interviewees goes so far as to use voice modulating software so as to sound male when she uses voiceinitiated video games. Further, a large number of the women I spoke to said that – in addition to deleting or “locking down” their social media accounts – they no longer posted images of themselves or their families on social media platforms, instead confining themselves to “safe” images of pets and meals. These alterations in Internet use should not be dismissed as trivial given that, as I will now explain, self-expression, self-publishing, and user engagement, interaction, and collaboration are some of the most celebrated and supposedly empowering features of the contemporary web. The term “web 2.0” – also referred to as the “read-write” web (Lessig, 2007) – refers to changes in the way the web has been constructed and is used such that user-generated content, interactivity, collaboration, and sharing is emphasized. This is in contrast to the “web 1.0” period when the Internet was in mostly a static, read-only format. Many of my interviewees described changing their Internet use in a manner that is reminiscent of the 1.0 web mode. That is, they “broadcast” material (via their blogs, public Facebook pages, and so on), but no longer interact with people with whom they are not acquainted. For example, they no longer read comments or have entirely disabled comments, and/or describe “locking down” their social media accounts to ensure these platforms can only be accessed by close friends and family, and people they already know. Again: while these alterations in use patterns may seem insignificant to those who are not “digital natives”1, having to use the web in this type of 1.0 mode is on par with being compelled to use an inefficient and antiquated computer operating system. The term “compelled” is a strong one and provides a springboard for my discussion of what is known in philosophy as “hard choice” scenarios. This will form the basis of my case that women are not making free choices to leave or change

192  Emma Jane the way they use the Internet, but are being coerced in a manner which can be understood as constituting a new aspect of the gender digital divide.

Coercion In literature on coercion in philosophy, the term “hard choice” is used to describe a choice situation in which rejecting a proposal puts one in dire straits, but accepting it is also unpalatable (Wertheimer, 1987, p. 233). For Alan Wertheimer, hard choices severely constrain autonomous action, and thus justify recourse to “the family of coercion terms” (ibid). Questions arise about whether the choice facing gendered cyberhate targets is sufficiently hard as to warrant the use of the term “coercion”. For instance, Jeanette Kennett, Nicole A Vincent, and Anke Snoek observe that when a bank robber threatens a teller with, “The money or your life,” the teller is coerced because she must choose between sacrificing her life or handing over the bank’s money (2015, p. 1070). A bank teller who yields to the threat, “The money or I’ll call you a rude name” would not have recourse to the defense of having acted under duress because this scenario does not involve a hard choice (ibid, p. 1071). Given that ad hominem invective (including rude names) is one feature of gendered cyberhate, we should investigate whether the choice women are faced with in online contexts is more like that confronting the second bank teller. In criminal justice contexts, duress can be used as a defense if a defendant is threatened with deadly force or grievous bodily harm unless they commit an equally or more serious crime, and a person of reasonable firmness would have been unable to resist the threat (Morse, 2009, pp. 268–9). Here, hard choice is a continuum concept, and common sense rather than a scientific formula is required to determine whether an agent is genuinely unable or is simply unwilling to resist (Morse, 2009, pp. 270, 279). While many aspects of such scenarios are ambiguous and open to debate, threats of death or grievous bodily harm are regarded as objective indicators of a hard-choice situation (Kennett, Vincent, & Snoek, 2015, p. 1071). That women are being threatened with death and/or grievous bodily harm over the Internet is indubitable. Further, while Internet antagonists and their apologists often contend that online threats do not constitute “real” threats because they are, for example, intended as jokes, or because their authors have no intention of carrying them out (cf.: Elliott, 2011; Auernheimer, 2013; O’Neill, 2015), the “empty threat” defense is unconvincing. Neither targets nor outside observers can accurately divine the intention of the authors of messages such as: “I did 12 years for ‘manslaughter’, I killed a woman, like you, who decided to make fun of guys cocks”; “Happy to say we live in the same state, Im looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head”; and “You are going to die and I am the one who is going to kill you. I promise you this” (messages tweeted to Hess by a Twitter user called “headlessfemalepig”) (Hess, 2014). Given that women have been physically assaulted as a result of online attacks that have spilled offline (Sandoval, 2013), it is entirely rational for cyberhate targets to entertain the possibility that one of

Gendered cyberhate 193 their multitude of antagonists might actually attempt to rape or kill them. When the games designer Zoe Quinn fled her home after receiving sixteen gigabytes of abuse during GamerGate, for instance, her thoughts on the matter were: “What am I going to do – go home and just wait until someone makes good on their threats? I’m scared that what it’s going to take to stop this is the death of one of the women who’s been targeted” (cited in Stuart, 2014). The coercive force of gendered cyberhate is also fueled by the epidemic of offline violence against girls and women as manifest in the fact that one in three women experience a form of violence over their lifetime (UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015, p. 2). It is hardly surprising, therefore, that women who receive online rape and death threats from men are likely to take them seriously. Further, in seventyfour per cent of Web Index countries,2 law enforcement agencies and the courts are failing to take appropriate action in response to acts of gender-based violence online, while one in five female Internet users live in countries where the harassment and abuse of women online is extremely unlikely to be punished (Web Index: Report 2014–15, n. d., pp. 4, 15). This likely provides further impetus for the targets of gendered cyberhate to assume that, given the dearth of institutional support, the best and most rational course of action is a DIY option such as withdrawing from certain online contexts and modes of engagement.

Conclusion Instinctively we may feel that the abuse and harassment of women online is wrong. Careful theorization is required, however, to fully articulate why and how these practices are unacceptable, alongside the provision of evidence as to how the harmfulness of these practices manifest in a material sense. In this chapter, I have endeavored to provide such a theorization alongside such evidence. I began by showing that there have, in recent years, been stark increases in gendered cyberhate, and I explained the effect this discourse is having on targets. In particular, I focused on the way women are withdrawing from or significantly changing the way they use the Internet and social media platforms in response to or in an effort to avoid abuse and harassment. The argument that these changes constitute a new, gendered dimension of digital divide might founder if the decisions of these women could be framed as free choices, neutral preferences, or overreactions. As such, I used theories about coercion from philosophy to make the case that while women’s choices to adopt less empowered modes of Internet engagement in an attempt to avoid abuse are rational, they still come about as a result of coercion. The necessarily delineated scope of this chapter raises a number of new questions about the relationship between cyberhate and digital divides. My hope is that these pique future empirical and theoretical work along two key lines of inquiry. First, it would be useful for future research to investigate the parallels between the experiences of gendered cyberhate targets and the experiences of those Internet users who are subject to similar hostility and hate in relation to race, religion, cultural background, sexual preference, physical and mental ability, and so on. There

194  Emma Jane seems to be a good prima facie case that the hard choice scenario described above would be applicable to members of other marginalized or oppressed community groups, and might therefore result in similar exclusion and under-usage. Second, further research could be done in relation to those women who are attacked viciously online and who are extremely distressed by these attacks, yet ultimately do not change their Internet usage patterns. If a woman and a man spend the same amount of time online doing the same things, yet the woman must suffer for this in a way the man does not, the scenario is clearly not equitable. Yet how would we go about measuring this suffering or the extent of this inequity? New findings from neuroscience about the way cognition, emotion, and social context can be even more influential than tissue damage in terms of producing physical pain (Moseley, 2007; Butler and Moseley, 2013) might offer some fruitful lines of inquiry. In the meantime, my hope is that this chapter provides further support to existing literature which, rather than narrowly focusing on technology, adequately recognizes the broad, structural inequities underpinning digital divides. Gendered cyberhate does involve new technology, but it can also be understood as a manifestation of old gendered oppression and violence. The coercive power of gendered cyberhate also emphasizes the need for nuanced thinking about digital divides. What I have described in this chapter is a form of coercive silencing, but it does not involve literal gagging, and, for the most part, it does not result in women who are entirely vocal or entirely mute the entire time. Instead, both the force applied and the harms produced by gendered cyberhate are often insidious, and could easily be overlooked if a digital divide researcher came to the table asking different questions. It would be all-too-easy, for instance, to look around the cybersphere, decide that women have the material access and skills required to make good use of the Internet, and conclude that if they are not doing so, it is simply due to personal preference. The case study of gendered cyberhate also brings further attention to the fact that digital divides are complex and volatile. It is not useful to think of the cybersphere as a domain which arrived in a fully formed state and which included some obvious, inequitable cleavages that might resolve themselves naturally or be addressed at a leisurely pace as time passed. Instead, the typography of the cybersphere is better imagined as the equivalent of an earthquake-ridden region where invisible yet powerful tectonic forces render the terrain permanently unstable, and where small ruptures can quickly become gaping canyons. It is sobering to reflect on the fact that Facebook and Twitter are both key platforms for oppressive hate speech and abuse, yet have only existed since 2004 and 2006 respectively – that is, since the web 2.0 era. These sorts of paradigmatic changes in the make-up and use of the cybersphere make it risky for scholars to cite dated research which may well refer to an entirely different Internet. They also support the case for the scholarly equivalent of rapid-response teams which are able to move quickly to critique (where necessary) extant modes of inquiry, as well as to propose novel lines of investigation to better keep pace with changes in the field (Jane, 2015, p. 81).

Gendered cyberhate 195 Finally, my hope is that this chapter brings a sense of humanity to the theorization of digital divides. While theorization necessarily requires abstraction, the metaphorical ones and zeroes of digital divides are people and the harms they can suffer are significant harms. It is no small thing that women are being hounded from their homes because of plausible cyber threats of sexual violence and murder. Further, the types of online inequities outlined in this chapter have the potential to snowball, ossify, and/or spawn entirely new problems if they are not addressed as a matter of urgency. Cyberhate targets who become increasingly risk-averse online may find themselves suffering increased and new forms of exclusion from an under-use of the Internet. The norms associated with dominant users, meanwhile, may become increasingly “baked in” to evolving digital cultures, thereby becoming even harder to change in the future. While the urgency evoked in this paragraph does bring a certain pressure to bear on digital divide scholars, it also underlines the fact that this work is critical work, and that, even in its most theoretical iterations, it still has the potential to impact the lives of real people in real ways.

Notes 1 “Digital natives” is a term for those people who have grown up with the Internet rather than coming to it later in life. 2 The World Wide Web Foundation’s Web Index covers eighty-six countries and measures the web’s contribution to social, economic, and political progress.

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Gendered cyberhate 197 Lessig, L. (2007). Keen’s “The cult of the amateur”: BRILLIANT! Lessig, 31 May. Available online at www.lessig.org/2007/05/keens-the-cult-of-the-amateur/. Liff, S., & Shepherd, A. (2004). An evolving gender digital divide? Oxford Internet Institute, Internet Issue Brief, 2, July, 1–17. Losh, S. C. (2003). Gender and educational digital chasms in computer and Internet access and use over time: 1983–2000. IT & Society, 1(4), Spring, 73–86. Morris, D. Z. (2016). Bestselling feminist author Jessica Valenti quits social media after rape and death threats directed at daughter. Fortune, 31 July. Available online at http://fortune.com/2016/07/31/bestselling-feminist-author-jessica-valenti-quits-socialmedia-after-rape-and-death-threats-directed-at-daughter/. Morse, S. J. (2009). Addiction, science, and criminal responsibility. In N. Farahany (Ed.), The impact of the behavioral sciences on criminal law (pp. 241–288). New York: Oxford University Press. Moseley, G. L. (2007). Painful yarns: metaphors & stories to help understand the biology of pain. Canberra: Dancing Giraffe Press. Nakamura, L., & Chow-White, P. A. (2012). Introduction – race and digital technology: code, the color line, and the information society. In L. Nakamura & P. A. Chow-White (Eds), Race after the Internet (pp. 1–18). New York & Oxon: Routledge. O’Neill, B. (2015). Should people be free to make death threats? Sometimes, yes. The Spectator, 3 November. Available online at http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/ should-people-be-free-to-make-death-threats-sometimes-yes/. Ono, H., & Zavodny, M. (2002). Gender and the Internet. Working Paper 2002–10, June. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Ono, H., & Zavodny, M. (2004). Gender differences in information technology usage: a U.S.-Japan comparison. Working Paper 2004–2, January. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Ostini, J., & Hopkins, S. (2015). Online harassment is a form of violence. The Conversation, 8 April. Available online at https://theconversation.com/ online-harassment-is-a-form-of-violence-38846. Sandoval, G. (2013). The end of kindness: weev and the cult of the angry young man, The Verge, 12 September. Available online at www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/ the-end-of-kindness-weev-and-the-cult-of-the-angry-young-man. Selwyn, N., Gorard, S., & Furlong, J. (2005). Whose Internet is it anyway?: Exploring adults’ (non)use of the Internet in everyday life. European Journal of Communication, 20(1), 5–26. doi: 10.1177/0267323105049631. Stuart, K. (2014). Zoe Quinn: “All Gamergate has done is ruin people’s lives”. The Guardian, 4 December. Available online at www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/ dec/03/zoe-quinn-gamergate-interview. UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender. (2015). Cyber violence against women and girls: a world-wide wake-up call. Available online at www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/ library/publications/2015/cyber_violence_gender%20report.pdf. Valenti, J. (2016). Insults and rape threats: writers shouldn’t have to deal with this. The Guardian, 15 April. Available online at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/ apr/14/insults-rape-threats-writers-online-harassment. van Dijk, J. & Hacker, K. (2003). The digital divide as a complex and dynamic phenomenon. The Information Society, 19(4), 315–326. van Deursen, A. J. A. M. & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2014). The digital divide shifts to differences in usage. New Media & Society 16(3), 507–526.

198  Emma Jane Walsh, J. (2007). Men who hate women on the Web: and the women (like me) who try to ignore them. Or at least I did – until the Kathy Sierra affair. Salon, 31 March. Available online at www.salon.com/2007/03/31/sierra/. Web Index: Report 2014–15. (n. d.). Web Index. Available online at http://thewebindex. org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Web_Index_24pp_November2014.pdf. Wertheimer, A. (1987). Coercion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Afterword

The state of digital divide theory Jan van Dijk

Introduction This book has shown how multi-faceted or multidimensional the theory of the digital divide is. At first, the digital divide seemed to be a simple technological and economical problem of digital media access, but in the meantime it has become a wide-ranging societal problem touching all domains and aspects of contemporary society. The authors of this book have considered the problem following an interdisciplinary approach with only a particular focus on sociological, psychological, economic, cultural or political aspects. In this afterword I want to first give an estimation of the nature of contemporary digital divide theorizing. Subsequently, a classification of digital theories will be offered, some of them contained in this book. In a third section I will link digital divide theorizing as demonstrated in this book to the phases of research so far, called the ‘first, second and third level of the digital divide’. Finally I will briefly give a way forward in digital divide theoretical development.

The nature of digital divide theory Digital divide theory is still in an initial phase of theory development. In a balance of digital divide research made more than ten years ago I concluded that digital divide research suffered from a lack of theory. In the preceding ten years it remained at a descriptive level (van Dijk, 2006). Unfortunately, I have to state that, ten years after the situation, it is not much better. Not for nothing is this book called ‘Theorizing the digital divide’ and not ‘Theory of the digital divide’. Currently, I observe four kinds of theorizing the digital divide: The first are attempts of conceptualization and argument showing directions to find a theory of the digital divide. This is the nature of this book and many journal articles and papers about the digital divide. The second are articles and papers offering variable models, mostly with correlations and regressions at a descriptive level. Most of them are simple demographics and socioeconomic variables. This is at best a start of a theory of the digital divide. They often do not even suggest linking their models to a particular theory. They derive the variables from literature research in many domains, sometimes in an eclectic way.

200  Jan van Dijk The third attempt to develop a theory of the digital divide is to construct and possibly test causal models with the aid of structural-equation modelling (SEM). Mostly a particular theoretical core is the start of such a model and subsequently causal factors from other backgrounds are added. It might also happen that an eclectic model of an assembly of all kinds of causal factors is constructed. These causal models often are extensions of descriptive correlation models and not deductions of existing theories. The fourth attempt of building a theory are specifications of existing theories that can easily be linked to the problematic of the digital divide. They could be deductions, but most of the time those theories are only a source of inspiration for particular concepts or factors. In the issues and problem of the digital divide some theories have a clear affinity. Those are technology adoption theories such as Diffusion of Innovation Theory, the Technology Acceptance Model, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, Uses and Gratifications Theory and Domestication Theory. Additionally, Structuration Theory of Giddens and the Capital Theory of Bourdieu and Coleman are often used. The causal models with SEM and these specifications come closer to a mature theory of the digital divide than the other kinds. However, in these attempts the systematic and axiomatic character also is often missing. For a fully developed theory, the following parts are needed: 1. explicit basic principles (the so-called hard core), 2. fully defined and operational basic concepts and most important 3. empirical statements which can be validly and reliably tested with 4. a typical heuristic or approach of research. Most of digital divide research has a long way to go to create these parts of a scientific theory.

A classification of digital divide theories Next to looking for the nature of digital divide theory in general the substantial origin of specific digital divide theories can be classified. Here again I propose a fourfold classification. The first category is a specification of classical social theories that comprised the first part of this book. Most of them are inspired by the classical sociologists (see Witte and Mannon, 2010). But in this book also the psychologist Freud was a source of inspiration (Hirata). Marx is the first to be mentioned. His heritage stimulated the concepts of types of capital (Bourdieu) and resources (Giddens) so often appearing in digital divide research. In the chapter of Ragnedda and Ruiu, these concepts are fully developed and comprised in a big model of all kinds of capitals. In the tradition of Marx it is obvious to investigate digital capital at the background of general social and economic capital. Max Weber has a second exemplary function. His interpretive approach using ideal-types for concept development (Neves and Mead in this volume) showed digital divide researchers to look for cultural capital and the life styles and life chances of people (Ragnedda, 2017). The Weberian tradition explains why particular cultures (middle and upper-class versus working class and Asian versus Hispanic American cultures, or general cultures of the young versus the elderly)

Afterword 201 ‘go digital’ earlier than others. Neves and Mead have shown that after constructing ideal-types, in reality the divide between use and non-use, earlier typified as the ‘have nots’ as compared to the ‘want nots’, is shown to be not clear-cut. There is a continuum between very frequent use and no use at all. The third source of inspiration is Simmel (Mushert and Gunderson in this volume). This source might be the most important one to be developed in the context of the nascent network society. It shows the way to look for association, relations and social networking. This means to observe how (non)users of digital media are related to each-others: the included and the excluded, the core and the periphery in the world, males and females, managers and executives. The vast majority of digital divide researchers take an individual perspective of equality (a methodology of looking for individual characteristics) and not a relational perspective (focusing on relations and structures). Charles Tilly (1999) has proposed this perspective for social inequality research in general, not mentioning the word digital at all. It inspired my own book, The deepening divide (2005). A final example of a classical inspiration comes from a power perspective. This is the perspective of the sociologists of Mannheim and Mann and the philosopher Foucault. Reading the chapter by Hjelholt and Schou about citizen classifications of people not using and being able to use digital media branded as ‘digital outcasts’, forced to use digital media and otherwise deprived from civil rights, I just had to think about the analysis in Foucault’s Discipline and punish (1975). The second category in this classification are a number of paradigms covering many attempts of substantial digital divide theories. I already mentioned the relational perspective. In this volume we have read the chapters about the Social Construction of Technology, Critical Theory and Feminist Theory. Kretchmer is using social construction and social mutual shaping theories to explain that access and use of digital media are completely intertwined with social contexts and with the design of this technology. She shows that the characteristics of digital technologies resemble the design, image and interests of their creators and are reshaped by their users. She argues that computers and the Internet do not remove race and ethnicity, the location of users and their potential disability from human interaction, but that ‘all divides in the real world are replicated in digital technology’. The paradigm of Critical Theory is developed in the last section of this book. This paradigm states that the digital divide ‘only’ ‘reproduces, replicates, and reinforce[s] social inequalities while also rooted in these inequalities’ (Mayo in his chapter). This covers existing inequalities such as colonialism and core-periphery domination in the supply of digital technology, for example, demonstrated in the dominance of English as the ‘lingua franca’ of the Internet. See the chapters of Mayo, Williams, Gupta and Wallace and Özsoy. Klinkisch and Suphan add the typical characteristic of critical theory that access and use of technology is a struggle for recognition of the self, and the access and usage of digital media. Finally, Jane adds the Feminist perspective to digital divide theory because gender distinctions ere entrenched in all aspects of access, use and outcomes of digital media. This even goes so far that we have to observe and explain the frequent abuse and harassment of women online.

202  Jan van Dijk The third category is a multifarious series of digital divide theories in domains and interest groups related to the digital divide. This phenomenon is so multifaceted and so much entrenched in every social distinction of society that many aspects of the digital divide have to partly be explained by other distinctions than simple inclusion or exclusion of digital technology. In this book two chapters are dealing with disability in access or use (Goggin and Dalvit). Another domain is illiteracy. The perspective of complete and functional illiterates and the new phenomenon of digital illiterates requires a special vision and explanation about digital media use for these groups. This means that the characteristics and access or use problems of these groups have to be at least partly explained by other theories than digital divide theories. The social, economic and cultural context of the digital divide is crucial here. Examples are theories about youth culture, non-Western culture, colonialism, core and periphery relations of countries in development and gender relations, all covered in this book. The last category focuses most on the topic of the digital divide itself. Those are a series of theories of technology acceptance or adoption. Well-known examples are Diffusion of Innovations Theory, Technology Acceptance Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, Unified Theory of Access and Use of Technology, Domestication Theory and Uses and Gratifications Theory. For these theories the digital divide occurs in a process of appropriating technology by users. Common phases in this process are: initial causes, behavioral intention, adoption, initial use and sustained use. The focus of the theories mentioned is on one or two of these phases (van Dijk, forthc.). The problem of these theories in this context is that they are general (all technologies), not on the specifics of digital media and their characteristics.

Contemporary digital divide theory at third levels of access In this book a distinction is made between the so-called First, Second and Third Level of the digital divide. Almost every contribution of this book focuses on the Second Level divide: skills and use. They are beyond the First Level (physical access) previously dominating digital divide research and theory. The Third Level (benefits of using digital media) is announced (Ragnedda and Ruiu chapter) or pronounced when the contexts and effects of digital media (non)use are discussed (many chapters). To discuss the digital divide theories, I need to offer a framework with the most factors of the digital divide as a process also figuring in the three levels. If you do not mind this overconfident move, I offer my own very broad causal and sequential model of access of digital media developed more than ten years ago (van Dijk, 2005) and afterwards tested in a series of empirical investigations. In a number of recent articles my colleagues and I have shown that this model fits the data in several surveys according to structural-equation modeling (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2013; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2015; van Deursen et al., 2017). The background of this model is my Resources and Appropriation Theory

Afterword 203 Third Level Divide

Outcomes - Economy - Social networks - Space/geography - Culture - Politics - Institutions

Positional categories - Labor - Education - Household - Nation Personal categories - Age/generation - Sex/gender - Race/ethnicity - Intelligence - Personality - Health/ability

Access Resources - Temporal - Material - Mental - Social - Cultural

Second Level Divide

First Level Divide

Sequential part Primary causal or sequential relation Secundary causal or sequential relation

Figure A.1 

Technical Design and Properties of ICT (hardware, software, content)

Causal and sequential model of access and effects of the digital divide.

Adapted from Jan A.G.M van Dijk (2005), The deepening divide, p .24.

of the digital divide inspired by structuration theory (Giddens), the capital theory of Bourdieu, the relational perspective of Tilly and several theories of technology acceptance. See Figure A.1. First level divide In the first phase of digital divide research (1995–2005), the focus was also on the two first phases of appropriation of digital technology: motivation and physical access. Primarily, of course, having a computer and Internet connection. In that time motivation of getting access was growing fast. In the developed countries the gap of physical access was growing among people with high and low income and education, between the young and the old, and between males and females (at a lesser rate). After this time these gaps were getting closer, while in the developing countries they are still starting to grow. Currently, about more than fifty percent of the world population has access. Motivation is a permanent driver of all following phases: physical access, digital skills and usage. Here mental personal categories (personality, intelligence, abilities, needs and attitudes) are coming forward. Computer anxiety and technophobia are important and still occurring obstacles here. In this book Hirata is discussing the desires that people satisfy in using digital media; Klinkisch and Suphan are talking about self-esteem, self-respect and identity and Jane about ‘cyberhate’. In the first phase of digital divide, research was dominated by economic, developmental and diffusion theory supported by descriptive demographic social

204  Jan van Dijk surveys. Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DIT), other diffusion theories and costbenefit economic theories were popular (van Dijk, 2005, 2006). DIT focused on personal and societal innovativeness, perceived characteristics of technologies and communication channels. Other diffusion theories (e.g. Norris, 2001) projected an evolution or first growing and then widening gaps of physical access to finally predict either normalization (everybody gets access) or stratification (some people continue to be excluded). A narrow economic supply and demand consumer theory assumed a trickle-down principle when the first users pay for the innovation, which makes the adoption cheaper for later users (Compaine, 2001). In this book, only Haffner addresses physical access issues discussing fixed and mobile digital infrastructures. The second level divide In 2002, Hargittai announced the second-level divide: to go beyond physical access only skills (computer literacy, etc.) and actual usage to completely describe and explain the digital divide. This level is dominant from 2005 until today. Almost every chapter in this book discusses the usage of digital media and some of them address problems of digital skills or literacy. Several frameworks of digital skills or literacy have been proposed. One of them is contained in the access part of Figure A.1, a series of operational, formal, information, communication, strategic and content-creation skills (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2011; van Deursen et al., 2016). Most skills frameworks are inspired by media and communication studies and by educational science. In the usage phase, scholars primarily concentrate on the frequency and diversity of usage and their determinants. Many typologies of digital media usage applications have also been proposed. At this phase theory shifts to sociology, cultural studies, anthropology and media or communication studies. One of the theories explaining inequality of usage is the usage gap thesis that is a successor of the knowledge gap thesis of the 1970s. This thesis states that some sections of the population use the ‘serious’ applications of the Internet benefitting work, career, education and societal participation, and other sections the applications of entertainment and simple communication and commerce (van Dijk, 1999; Bonfadelli, 2002; Zillien & Hargittai, 2009; van Deursen et al., 2013). In all phases of appropriation of technology, the technical design and properties of ICTs influence the opportunities and risks of (no) access and in (not) taking these steps, and simultaneously the designs and properties are redesigned by users or non-users according to the Social Construction of Technology perspective (Kretchmer in this book). See Figure A.1 on page 203. The third level divide A few years ago, a third level of digital divide research was announced and started to be practiced (Helsper et al., 2015; Ragnedda, 2017; and Ragnedda & Ruiu in this book). This focuses on the outcomes of the four phases of access:

Afterword 205 the benefits or effects of having and using digital technology, or not having and using it. These outcomes can be observed in all domains or spheres of society: the economy, politics, civil society, social relations, culture and spatial effects. See Figure A.1. These outcomes are the stake of it all, the impact of the digital divide on society and (in)equality in general. In a feedback loop these outcomes reinforce or moderate the existing inequalities of personal and positional categories and their different resources (see Figure A.1). Because here digital inequality is touching all domains of society theories need to be multior interdisciplinary. Economics, sociology, political science, educational science, media, communication or culture studies and many others all have a stake in this. In the third level digital divide research it will become evident that digital inequality is not special. It is an aspect of social inequality in general. The only question is whether the outcomes will reinforce or mitigate existing inequality, in specific domains or in general. My own conjecture is that in the network society the outcomes of the digital divide will reinforce existing social inequality in several domains. The support of this conjecture is not only derived from my empirical work but also by the so-called network ‘law of trend amplification’ developed in van Dijk (2012). Digital media are able to both increase and decrease societal inequality, however, according to many observers the current trend worldwide is growing inequality in several domains, first of all socioeconomic inequality. When we started digital divide research, most investigators thought that the free, accessible and useful applications of the Internet could lead to less inequality. Now, about twenty-five years later, most observers are less optimistic than before.

The way forward To go forward, digital divide theory has to elaborate and to empirically operationalize the basic concepts. The frameworks produced have to be improved. Most existing frameworks and concepts are still relevant. The first phases of access, motivation and physical access, are still crucial. Even in the richest technologically advanced societies some social categories have many more devices, software programs and subscriptions than others. However, inequalities of skill and usage opportunities will be most decisive. The second advice is to build more systematic theories consisting of core statements or axioms, empirical statements and related heuristics for a methodology. We have to go beyond the stage of endless free new conceptualization, as if digital divide research is not already more than twenty years old. Third, we need theories which are, or can be, backed by empirical results. The chapters in this book need more empirical support than actually produced. They only consist of arguments and references to the work of others. The theory of the digital divide needs to be multidisciplinary and preferably interdisciplinary. If anything has been demonstrated in this book it is that the digital divide touches all aspects of contemporary society.

206  Jan van Dijk

References Bonfadelli, H. (2002). The Internet and knowledge gaps: a theoretical and empirical investigation. European Journal of Communication, 17(1), 65–84. Compaigne, B. (Ed.). (2001). The digital divide: facing a crisis or creating a myth? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hargittai, E. (2002). The second-level digital divide: differences in people’s online skills. First Monday, Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Intern, April 2002. Helsper, E.J., van Deursen, A.J.A.M. & Eynon, R. (2015). Tangible outcomes of Internet use. From digital skills to tangible outcomes project report. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute. Available online at: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=112. Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide, civic engagement, information poverty and the Internet worldwide. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ragnedda, M. (2017). The third digital divide: a Weberian approach to digital inequalities. London and New York: Routledge. Tilly, Charles. (1999). Durable inequality. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Van Deursen, A.J.A.M., Helsper, E.J. & Eynon, R. (2016). Development and validation of the Internet Skills Scale (ISS). Information, Communication & Society, 19(6), 804–823. Van Deursen, A.J.A.M., Helsper, E.J., Eynon, R. & Van Dijk, J.A.G.M. (2017). The compoundness and sequentiality of digital inequality. International Journal of Communication, 11(2017), 452–473. Van Deursen, A.J.A.M. & Van Dijk, J.A.G.M. (2011). Internet skills and the digital divide. New Media & Society, 13(6), 893–911. Van Deursen, A.J.A.M. & Van Dijk, J.A.G.M. (2013). The digital divide shifts to differences in usage. New Media & Society, 16(3), 507–526. Van Deursen, A.J.A.M. & Van Dijk, J.A.G.M. (2015). Toward a multifaceted model of Internet access for understanding digital divides: an empirical investigation. The Information Society, 31(5), 379–391. Van Dijk, Jan (1999). The network society, social aspects of new media. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Van Dijk, Jan A.G.M. (2005). The deepening divide, inequality in the information society. Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi: Sage Publications. Van Dijk, Jan A.G.M. (2006). Digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. Poetics, 34, 221–235. Van Dijk, Jan (2012). The network society, social aspects of new media (Third Edition). London, Thousand Oaks, CA, New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications. Witte, James C. and Mannon, Susan (2010). The Internet and social inequalities. New York and London: Routledge. Zillien, N. and Hargittai, E. (2009). ‘Digital distinction: status-specific Internet uses. Social Science Quarterly, 90(2), 274–91.

Index

absolute and relative space: Internet infrastructures 103, 106–10, 113 access (or lack thereof ) to digital technologies 2–3, 25–6, 159–60; access and participation in Africa 5; digital intermediaries 166; disabled people 70; epistemological access 75–80, 82–3; first level of digital divide 25–6, 30, 117–18, 203, 203–4; impact on digital divide 133; language and 75–80, 82–3; social exclusion and 133–4; see also benefits of technology use; motivation and skills acquiring digital proficiency, 76, 77–8, 79–81, 188; age 81–2; interaction and production 81 Africa: access and participation 5; decolonial and border theory 136–8; exclusion from the network society 77; hybridisation of cultures 142; language and cultural presence online 5, 134–5, 138–43; mobile device usage 76 attitudes towards data: psychoanalysts and bid data analysts 38–9 Australia: conceptualisation of Aboriginality 160–1; cyberhate 187; informational divides and Otherness 160–1; online representation of the “Other” 6, 157–9 benefits of technology use 187, 202–3; capital theory 203; structuration theory 203; technology acceptance 203; third level of digital divide 2, 22, 25–6, 30–1, 203, 204–5 big data defined 38; factors determining size 38; holding versus analysing big data 38 big data analysis 36, 45–6; presuppositions 39–40; random sampling 39–40;

scientific objectivity 40; statistical techniques 39–40 big data donors 36, 45 big data holders 36 big data-oriented societies: main players 36; skills to access big data 36–7; see also attitudes towards data big data rich versus big data poor 36 border analysis see decolonial theory and the internet Bordieu, P. 4, 146; capital theory 21, 24, 29, 30–1, 75, 78, 81, 200, 203; cultural rituals 149; linguistic capital 75, 78, 81; social capital 21, 24, 29, 30–1 center-periphery analysis of the digital divide 146, 147, 153; Mardin 147–8, 151; state/citizen relations 147–8, 151 citizenship 6, 92; civil participation 6, 151–2; digital citizenship 6, 174–5; classification systems and 175–6, 177–80; civil registration in Denmark 177–80; Web 2.0, impact of 152 civil participation: Turkey 6, 147, 151–2 civil registration in Denmark: centralisation of information 179; digital/non digital classification 180–1; historical background 178–9; mandatory digitalisation of state-citizen relation 6, 180–1; purpose 177; reform 178; statecitizen constellations model 177, 177 classification systems: citizenship and 175–6; emergence of digital/non-digital classification 180–1; public institutions and 176–7; see also civil registration in Denmark Coleman, J.: social capital 22–3, 200 computer literacy see digital literacy confidence of users 28–9; women 188 controllability of data analysis 38, 45–6

208  Index “Creolisation” concept 82, 83 critical spatial theory of digital divide: background 104–5; spatial justice 105 Critical Theory 161, 201; decoloniality 135; disability and technology 67–8 cyberhate see gendered cyberhate cyber-literacy see digital literacy cybertrust 28–9 data-analysis/psychoanalysis analogy 35–6, 37, 37–8 data mining 36–7, 39–40; see also big data analysis database management systems: big data 36–7; client-server 36–7; cloud-based 37 decolonial theory and the internet 5, 134–5, 143; border thinking and 136–8; coloniality of being 137–8; Eurocentric nature 137; governmentality 137; hybridisation of cultures 142; language and culture 138–2; political economy and 136; subalternity and 137–8 Denmark see civil registration in Denmark diffusion of innovations theory 77, 95–6, 200, 202, 203–4 digital capital 4, 21–2, 23, 26–31, 200; see also interrelationship between digital and social capital digital citizenship 6, 174–5; civil registration in Denmark 177–80; gendered cyberhate, impact of 186 digital divide theories: access and effects of 203; causal models and structuralequation modelling 200; classical social theories, as 200–1; classification of 200–2; conceptualisation and argument 199; domains and interest groups 202; specifications of existing theories 200; theories of technology acceptance 202; ‘traditional’ analysis of digital inequalities 11, 48, 77, 117–18, 133–4; variable models with correlations and regressions 199 digital immigrants 77, 82 digital infrastructure 107–8, 110–13, 113–14; see also fixed infrastructure digital literacy 48, 53, 80, 81–3, 97–8, 117, 148, 159, 165, 204 digital natives 77, 82–83, 117–18 digital registers 80 “digitality” 75–6, 82–3; acquisition and learning 80–2; “Creolisation” theory 82; digitality divides 77–8; hegemonic language, as 78–80, 83

digitisation in the public sector 6, 174–5, 181–2; implications for state/citizen relations 183; mandatory digitalisation of state-citizen relation 180–1 disability and digital inequalities 5, 65, 72–2; barriers and obstacles to access 70; complex model of disability and technology 69; design 70; digital usage trends in United States 93–9; disability and geography 70; marginalisation of disabled in research 70; mobile devices and 5; participation 5, 71; rethinking requirements regarding digital technologies 70–1, 72; rethinking requirements regarding digital technologies 70–1, 72; scope of disability 70; social construction of technology 96–7; social model of disability 67–8; social shaping of disability 69; social shaping of technology 96–7; United States 92–9; see also disability theories disability theories 63; history of disability inequality 64; injustice and unfairness 63; social inclusion/exclusion 63–4; social model of disability 67–8; waves of scholarly analysis 65–6 domestication theory 202 economic exchange 15–16; principles 16 empowering potential of technologies 11, 75–6, 78–80, 83, 112, 135, 139–40, 162, 167, 175–6, 191, 193 Euro-American dominance 5, 133–5, 137 exploratory data analysis (EDA) 39 feminist theory 2, 6, 186–7, 201; see also gendered cyberhate fixed infrastructures 103, 107–10, 113–14; digital infrastructure and 110–11, 113–14 Foucault, M.: governmentality 137, 167; language and power 75, 201 Freud, S. 35–6; see also psychoanalytic approach to digital divides future directions for research 205; information as an object of value 18; psychoanalytic approach to data 46; recognition theory 127; social capital 31; social construction of technology 97–8; social shaping of technology 97–8 gendered cyberhate 186–7; coercion and duress 192–3; digital divides,

Index 209 relationship to 193–4; impact of 189–92; psychological effects 189–90; reputation, impact on 190–1; self-censorship, leading to 191, 195; self-representation, impact on 191; terminology 187; trends 189; usage patterns and, 191, 194; see also feminist theory; women geospatial arrangement of physical Internet  5, 103–4, 105–6; see also critical spatial theory of digital divides Giddens, A. 200, 203 Global North versus Global South 133–5; border, hybridity and the digital divide 142; decolonial and border theory 136–8; language, culture and the digital divide 138–42; political economy theories 136 hate speech theory in an information society: gendered cyberhate 6; Turkey 152; see also gendered cyberhate “haves and have nots” 3, 25; global differences 77–8 Honneth, A. 5; development of theory of recognition 119–20; limitations of recognition theory 126; mutual recognition 118; recognition 118–19 human rights: approaches to disability 68–9; fundamental role of digital technologies 68 ideal type concept 4–5, 49; accentuation and synthesis 50–1; advantages of this approach 57–8; case studies 56; conceptualisation of non-use 55; criticisms 52; emergence 50; explaining social processes 52–3; generalising and individualising, tension between 51; portrayal of reality 51 imposed non-use 56 information/money analogies 4, 17 information as an object of value 4, 11, 18; future directions for research 18; money and information compared and contrasted 17 information exchange principles 17, 18 infrastructure see digital infrastructures; fixed infrastructures; Internet infrastructures instrumental non-use 56 intentional non-use 56 Internet glossaries: IHL Sözlük versus Ekşi Sözlük 148–51 Internet infrastructures: absolute and relative space 106–7, 113; fixed

and digital infrastructures 107–13, 113–14; Marxist-postcolonial analysis of development 106–7; see also digital infrastructures; fixed infrastructures interpretavism and digital inequalities 4–5; advantages of this approach 57–8; meanings, actions and outcomes 48–9; role of new technologies in everyday life 49; use and non-use of digital technology 49–50 interrelationship between digital and social capital: conceptualisation of social capital 26; cybertrust 28–9; enlargement of social networks 27–8; increasing visibility through social media 28; relational capital of Internet users 27; strong ties 26–7; virtual communities 26–7; weak ties 27 language: coloniality 138–43; conceptualisation of ICT as 75; “Creolisation” concept 82, 83; extrinsic language 79; functional language 79–80; intrinsic language 78–9 levels of digital divide 2, 4, 22, 174, 199, 202–5; social capital and 25–6, 30–1 linguistic capital 75, 78, 81 Mardin, S. 6; center-periphery analysis of social stratification in Turkey 147–8, 151 Marxian sociology 200; criticisms 18; political economy theories 136 mobile devices: Africa, usage in 76, 81–2; disability and 5; impact 77–8; status symbols, as 79–80; studies on usage 53, 76, 77, 79 money 12, 18; information as an object of value 16–17; information compared and contrasted 17; measuring value 15–16; social implications of 15–16; social characteristics of 15–16; see also information/money analogies money economy 12, 15; theory of value 15–16 motivation and skills inequalities: second level of digital divide 25, 30 117–18, 203, 204 new forms of digital inequality 2, 173–4 new perspectives 2, 3, 187–8; see also social construction of technology; social shaping of technology non-use see use and non-use

210  Index obligations and social capital 22–3 “Otherness” and the “Other” 6; connectedness 162; cultural identity 161–2; deconstruction of 160–1; informational divides 160–1; online presence/representations 158–9, 162–3, 168–9; Oriental Other 111–12; position in the digital divide 164–5; reconstruction of 167–8; repositioning 165–7; subjugation 161; western modernity and 137–8 “pluriversalisation” of the Internet 143 political economy theories 136 political participation 6, 152; impact of Web 2.0 152–4 population and big data 40 presuppositions of data analysts 39–40; presuppositions of psychoanalysis compared 40–3 privatisation of digital infrastructure 106, 111 psychoanalytic approach to digital divides 35–6; attitudes towards big data 38–9; methodology of analogical approach 36–8; presuppositions of big data analysts 39–40; psychoanalysis and data analysis, presuppositions compared 42–3; resistance and mental illness 40–2; termination of an analysis 43–5 Putnam, R.: social capital 23 race and ethnicity divide: social construction of technology 94–6; social shaping of technology 94–6; United States, digital usage in 91–2 random sampling and big data 40 recognition theory 5, 117; development of theory of recognition 119–20; digital divide from recognition perspective 123–6, 124, 126; Honneth, A. 5, 118–20; legal rights 121; love and care 120–1; moral and social conflicts 122–3; relations of recognition 120; social sciences in general 118–19; solidarity and community 121–2 relational capital of Internet users 27, 30, 56–7, 105–6 scientific objectivity and big data 40 secrecy: changing concept in modern society 14; creation of value 14–15; scope of concept of secrecy 14; social interaction and 14

sensitizing principles of information exchange 17, 18 Simmel, G. 4, 11–12, 13–14, 201; exchange and money 15–16; influence 12; secrecy and information 14–15 skills (or lack thereof) 2–3, 22–3, 25, 29–30, 48, 54–6, 78, 97–8, 104, 117–18, 124–6, 182–3, 188, 202–4; data analysis 36–7, 45–6; digital registers 80; see also motivation and skills inequalities social capital 4, 21–2, 24–5; access to resources 24; conceptualisation 26; digital capital, interrelationship with 26–30; economic capital compared 22, 23; future research 31; human capital compared 22, 23; internet use 26; levels of digital divide and 30–1; multidimensional nature 22–5; other types of capital compared 23; trustworthiness of social environment 22–3; virtual communities 24, 26–7 social construction of technology (SCOT) 5, 88–9, 99 201; disability divide 96–7; implications 97–8; race and ethnicity 94–6; United States usage trends, 93–9; urban/rural divide 96 social identity construction theories 5 social media and digital inequalities 127; democracy and participation 123–6, 124; education 123–6, 124; health and wellbeing 123–6, 124; influence and attendance 123–6, 124; migration and integration 123–6, 124; prosperity 123–6, 124; protest movements 123–6, 124 social networking service addiction 36 social networking sites: case study on use and non-use 54–5; negative social practices 54; perceived usefulness 54; self-preservation 54 social norms governing role of information in society 12 social shaping of technology (SST) 89–90, 99, 201; disability divide 96–7; implications 97–8; race and ethnicity 94–6; United States usage trends, 93–9; urban/rural divide 96 social stratification 159; center-periphery analysis of social stratification in Turkey 147–8; Turkey 147–8, 154; Weberian approach 48–9 sociology of information 4, 11, 12–14, 13 state/citizen relations 173–4, 182–3; civil registration in Denmark 177–81;

Index 211 digitisation projects 174–5; mandatory digitalisation of 180–1; state-citizen constellations model 177, 177 structural-equation modelling (SEM) 200 subalternism see Otherness technology acceptance model 202 theory of planned behaviour 202 threats to participation: gendered cyberhate 6, 186–7, 189, 192–3 ‘traditional’ analysis of digital inequalities 11, 48, 77, 117–18, 133–4 trust: cybertrust 28–9; social capital and 22–2, 26, 28–30 trustworthiness of social environment: social capital and 22–3; trust and cooperative skills 23 Turkey and the digital divide 6, 146–7; center-periphery analysis 147–8; civil participation 6, 151–2; class divides and social stratification 147–8; emergence of Islamic bourgeoisie 147–8; Mardin, 147–8; political participation 6, 152–4 unified theory of access and use of technology 202 United States: disability divide 92–3; Internet usage statistics, generally 90–1; race and ethnicity divide 91–2; social construction of technology, 93–9; social shaping of technology, 93–9; urban/rural divide 92 urban/rural divide: social construction of technology 96; social shaping of

technology 96; United States, digital usage in 92 use and non-use: case studies 53–6; disability divide 92–3; ideal type concept 48; impacts on 49; imposed non-use 56; instrumental non-use 56; intentional non-use 56; interpretation and explanation 49–50; interpretive perspective 48; race and ethnicity divide 91–2; social construction of technology, 93–9; social networking sites 54–5; social shaping of technology, 93–9; United States 90–3; urban/rural divide 92; users, non-users and “faux users” 53–4; see also interpretavism and digital inequalities; Weberian approach uses and gratifications theory 202 value theory: economic exchange mediated by money 15 virtual communities: social capital and 24, 26–7, 29 Weber, M. 4–5, 49–53, 200–1; see also ideal type concept; interpretivism and digital inequalities Weberian approach: social and cultural benefits of access 25; social stratification 48–9 withholding information see secrecy women: Africa 77–8; online (in)equity 77–8, 96, 188; rural areas 77–8, 96; see also gendered cyberhate

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