How (not) to deepen information inequality via information policy: a contribution of the contextual approach
Abstract
The author conducts a critical analysis of misleading assumptions that proliferate in research and policies addressing the digital divide and which further prove relevant in terms of their potential integration with the research tradition focused on information inequality. The argument is supported by evidence garnered by research on the knowledge gap, outcomes of internet use, mobile phone use, social support and diffusion of innovations.
This critical reworking of the subject utilizes relevant sections from previous work by the author, which aims at transcending the existing conceptual framework dominating the tangled web of digital divide research, information society theory and information policy. The concluding section presents an alternative, contextual approach and its implications for information policy in terms of two newly-identified determinants of the digital divide: the embeddedness of the internet in a social context and the cost-outcome ratio of using alternative information sources when compared to the internet.