Digital inequalities 2.0: Legacy inequalities in the information age

Laura Robinson (1) , Jeremy Schulz (2) , Grant Blank (3) , Massimo Ragnedda (4) , Hiroshi Ono (5) , Bernie Hogan (3) , Gustavo Mesch (6) , Shelia R Cotten (7) , Susan B Kretchmer (8) , Timothy M Hale (9) , Tomasz Drabowicz (10) , Pu Yan (3) , Barry Wellman (11) , Molly-Gloria Harper (12) , Anabel Quan-Haase (13) , Hopeton S Dunn (14) , Antonio A. Casilli (15, 16, 17, 18) , Paola Tubaro (19, 20, 21, 22) , Rod Carveth (23) , Wenhong Chen (24) , Julie B Wiest (25) , Matías Dodel (26) , Michael Stern (7) , Christopher Ball (9) , Kuo-Ting Huang (27) , Aneka Khilnani (28)

1 Santa Clara University
2 UC Berkeley - University of California [Berkeley]
3 University of Oxford
4 Northumbria University [Newcastle]
5 Hitotsubashi University
6 University of Haifa [Haifa]
7 Michigan State University System
8 JHU - Johns Hopkins University
9 UIUC - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [Urbana]
10 University of Social Science [Lodz]
11 University of Toronto
12 University of Windsor [Ca]
13 UWO - University of Western Ontario
14 UB - University of Botswana
15 SID - Sociologie Information-Communication Design
16 SES - Département Sciences Economiques et Sociales
17 I3 SES - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation de Telecom Paris
18 IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
19 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
20 TAU - TAckling the Underspecified
21 LRI - Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique
22 IDHES - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société
23 Morgan State University
24 University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
25 WCUPA - West Chester University of Pennsylvania
26 UCU - Universidad Católica del Uruguay [Montevideo, Uruguay]
27 Ball State University
28 GU - Georgetown University [Washington]

2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the “digital divide.” Although a quarter century has passed, legacy digital inequalities continue, and emergent digital inequalities are proliferating. Many of the initial schisms identified in 1995 are still relevant today. Twenty-five years later, foundational access inequalities continue to separate the digital haves and the digital have-nots within and across countries. In addition, even ubiquitous-access populations are riven with skill inequalities and differentiated usage. Indeed, legacy digital inequalities persist vis-à-vis economic class, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, aging, disability, healthcare, education, rural residency, networks, and global geographies. At the same time, emergent forms of inequality now appear alongside legacy inequalities such that notions of digital inequalities must be continually expanded to become more nuanced. We capture the increasingly complex and interrelated nature of digital inequalities by introducing the concept of the “digital inequality stack.” The concept of the digital inequality stack encompasses access to connectivity networks, devices, and software, as well as collective access to network infrastructure. Other layers of the digital inequality stack include differentiated use and consumption, literacies and skills, production and programming, etc. When inequality exists at foundational layers of the digital inequality stack, this often translates into inequalities at higher levels. As we show across these many thematic foci, layers in the digital inequality stack may move in tandem with one another such that all layers of the digital inequality stack reinforce disadvantage.

Domains: Sociology; Web

Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz, Grant Blank, Massimo Ragnedda, Hiroshi Ono, et al.. Digital inequalities 2.0: Legacy inequalities in the information age. First Monday, 2020, 25 (7), ⟨10.5210/fm.v25i7.10842⟩. ⟨halshs-02889893⟩