Critic of Neil Selwyn's “Reconsidering political and popular understandings on digital divide”
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Transcript of Critic of Neil Selwyn's “Reconsidering political and popular understandings on digital divide”
March 6, 2012Rajesh Cheemalakonda
1
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
March 6, 2012Rajesh Cheemalakonda
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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.