March 6, 2012Rajesh Cheemalakonda

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Reading:

Neil Selwyn, “Reconsidering political and popular understandings on digital divide”

A meaningful definition for e readiness and digital development are dependent on the

definition of digital divide. For decades Political and popular conceptualizations of the digital

divide have tended to be strictly dichotomous; the haves and have not’s. According to Ismael

Pena-Lopez what lacks in all these concepts is functiona empowerment of ICTs.

Adding to mark Warschauer’s seminal articles on digital development, here comes the

interesting reference of Selwyn, N (2004). developing a new framework to redefine digital

divide. He starts with four questions:

1. What is meant by ICT;2. What is meant by access;3. What is relation between ‘access to ICT’ and ‘use of ICT’; and4. How can we best consider the consequences of engagement with ICT;

and answers back proposing four categories of digital development which he calls as four stages

in digital divide.

1. Formal/theoretical ‘access to ICTs and content2. Effective access to ICTs and content3. Engagement with ICTs and content4. Consequences of ICT usage

Many scholars argued that ICTs can help in social and economic progression of nation states.

Scholars like Castells and Reich argued that new computer and telecommunication technologies

will transform countries into ‘knowledge economies’ and ‘network societies’. But this techno

enthusiasm has been tampered by emerging new problems of the time like digital exclusion.

Initially the questions pertaining to digital divide were limited to who is connected to ICTS. The

haves and have-nots theory and was confined to the gap between developed and developing or

less developed countries. However there is change in scholars approach due to surfacing issues

March 6, 2012Rajesh Cheemalakonda

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of technological inequalities with in individual countries. Selwyn’s article starts with theoretical

origin of term digital divide from center-left social inclusion policy agenda, and moves on to

four theoretical limitations to consider four theoretical and conceptual limitations to

conventional notions of the digital divide in terms of individuals with and without ‘access’ to

ICT.

First theoretical limitation he points out is in defining ICTs. He says the existing frameworks

defined ICTs as access to computer hardware and internet. These definitions were not inclusive

in respect to rapid technological revolution that occurred in recent decades the new proposed

framework tries to make it more inclusive by adding telecommunications, electronic gadget IT

interfaces etc for a broader definition of ICTs. The use of term ‘digital’ to refer to the content

that is provided via such technologies the ‘soft’-ware rather than the ‘hard’-ware. Second

theoretical limitation he discussed in the paper is in defining access to ICTs. Here he stressed

more on the mediating factors that intertwine with the access to ICTs beyond the concept of

have and have not. Here he clearly distinguishes the difference in ‘having individual, personal

access’ to ‘community based access of ICTs’. And focuses on the mediating factors such as ease

of use, social, cultural, gender, caste, based exclusions, individual privacy etc.

The third theoretical limitation he proposed is the relation between ‘access to ICTs’ and the

‘use of ICTs’. By adopting the innovations diffusions theory he points out the inequalities in

access to ICTs between early adopters to laggards of the technologies and also tries to establish

the difference between ‘use of ICTs’ to ‘meaningful use of ICTs’. Lack of meaningful use is not

due to technological factors like physical access, operational skills but individuals’ engagement

with ICTs is based on a variety of other factors like social, psychological, economic and

pragmatic reasons. Thus engagement with ICTs is least concerned with ownership or access to

ICTs but more about how people develop relations with ICTs. The fourth limitation he discussed

in the article is pertaining to consequences of ICT usage. Quoting Lyon he argues that the ICTs

are not automatic for all. By its very nature, some information is specialist and restricted to a

few with the requisite intellectual and managerial skills to manipulate and use it thus creating

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inequalities. He points towards understanding the situational relevance of access to technology

and information from the individual’s point of view, and, in particular, the relevance of the

consequences or potential consequences of engagement with ICT. He suggests that the most

useful framework to utilize here is the various dimensions of participation in society that can be

seen as constituting ‘inclusion’ of various activities in people’s engagement with ICTs like

production, political, consumption and saving activity.

Thus he attempts to develop a new framework to understand digital divide. Using Selwyn’s

framework we can identify the forms of various affects that influence the individual ability to

access, and utilize the information through ICTs. At this juncture I believe this framework can

help us to get rid of conventional approaches in understanding digital exclusion. I personal feel

Selwyn’s article seems to have less focused on various other mediating factors like

technological drop-outs of IT, pragmatic time warp that is created due to technical delay in

provision of access to ICTs by governments or BGO projects, cultural and power related

interventions by those who own power in controlling the information access. However the

framework developed here is not a rigid and these issues can still be included in further

developments.