Abstract
This book focuses (a) on the role of sociology in the process of social construction of information society and (b) on the empirically grounded attempt to revise key preconditions of the dominating theoretical framework used to understand the role of ICT in contemporary social structure: the information society theory. Following the introduction, the key arguments of information society theory are presented in order to support the book's inclusion of Manuel Castells, who's latest social theory is introduced in the third chapter.
In order to proceed with the problem of resolving inner contradictions of information society by bridging the digital divide, the existing digital divide research is mapped in detail in the fourth chapter. The validity of observed distributions and their dynamics is assessed in relation to major dimensions of the digital divide.
The concepts of the digital generation, knowledge gap, usage gap, and the stratification model of Internet diffusion are also introduced and confronted with empirical evidence and/or logical consistency. The identified inadequacies of both the digital divide thesis and its empirical grounding are then addressed in the fifth chapter for a critical examination of the seven identified preconditions of the digital divide thesis.
In the sixth chapter, the author introduces the basis for a new digital divide research paradigm in the form of a situational model of the digital divide. The situational model leads to the necessity to analyze both the digital divide and the information society not as a static parameter of a certain epoch, but rather as a process of growing dependence on one technological infrastructure.
In the last chapter, grounded in his synthesis of available digital divide discourse analyses, the author stresses the performative function of the information society theory and outlines the framework for a possible future analysis of its ideological role in the process of informatization.