Stratification and the Digital Revolution

Abstract

The social and economic advantages that accompany new advances in information technology have been quite uneven, causing what has come to be known as the "digital divide." This paper looks at the digital revolution in relation to social stratification in the United States. Its central aim is to examine what has come to be known as the "digital divide" by summarizing research findings from various studies on the demographics of Internet use. The paper also identifies types of digital divides, such as the rural digital divide, and explains some of the problems the United States faces in overcoming these divides. After briefly explaining the technological difficulties of narrowing the digital divide, the paper looks at the role of education in contributing to the solution.

Overview

The Digital Revolution & the Digital Divide. In recent decades, the widespread use of computers and the Internet has caused a transition from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. However, research indicates that the spread of information and communication technology (ICT), and the inevitable social and economic advantages that accompany ICT, have been quite uneven, causing what has come to be known as the "digital divide." The term "digital divide" was first used by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in a series it published, Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion; the term was created to express the uneven diffusion of ICT in our information age (Hawkins, 2005, p. 172). Upon researching the spread of ICT, the NTIA quickly realized that socioeconomic stratification in the United States heavily influenced the distribution of ICT. In other words, in large cities such as New York, where ICT infrastructures most quickly became fully developed, there was nevertheless a divide between those who had access to the technology and those who did not. A lot of the early research was intent on establishing what percentage of which specific groups were or were not using the new technology and why they were or were not using it.

Paul C. Gorski and Christine Clark (2003) note that the term digital divide is traditionally used to describe computer and Internet access inequalities between people belonging to groups with social or cultural identifiers such as race, sex, socioeconomic class, and disability status, among other identifying factors, and this has created terms specifying those groups. The authors cite the example that the term "racial digital divide" is used to discuss discrepancies in rates of ICT access between racial groups. The authors also point out that studies show white Americans and Asian Americans have much higher rates of ICT access than African Americans or Latino Americans (Gorski & Clark, 2003, p. 29). Chris Taylor (2000) observes that the term "digital divide" has become "mired in the blurry realm of cliché, applied variously to women, the disabled, seniors, ethnic minorities, rural and inner-city populations" (p. 5). However, they also warn us that "the underlying threat is real." Taylor notes that ICT has advanced so rapidly that "a new upper class—composed largely of the same white, affluent, college-educated males that made up the old upper class —has spurted ahead of the rest of society, mostly because they have the time and money necessary to acquire and understand the tools of the digital revolution" (Taylor et al., 2000, 6).

Gorski and Clark argue that perceiving the digital divide as only a series of gaps in rates of physical access to computers and the Internet may fail to represent the full context and reasons for the divide. The authors advise that readers seek out what may be more deeply lying "educational, social, cultural, political, and economic ramifications." Also, the authors observe that a narrow conceptualization of the divide—meaning to perceive the divide as merely one of Internet access—"serves the interests of privileged groups who can continue to critique access rates instead of thinking critically and reflectively about their personal and collective roles in cycling and recycling old inequities in a new cyber-form" (Gorski & Clark, 2003, 4).

Access & Distribution. Gorski and Clark's and Taylor's observations point out what is probably the main reason that the question of access to ICT has become so important. As the technology has entered American culture, it has quickly become apparent that affluence is attached to distributing and using the technology. ICT is quickly becoming—or probably already is—a powerful new carrier of what were pre-existing inequities in American society, meaning the digital trend may be propagating "old inequities in a new cyber-form." This also indicates that those who do not have access will be increasingly disadvantaged as the Internet, email, and other web-based technologies solidify within the affluent levels of American society and become an important feature in the nation's market economy. One chief executive of a consulting company, during congressional testimony in 2001, warned that the Internet was quickly becoming so pervasive in society that not having access to ICT, or not knowing how to use it, would soon be much the same as being illiterate in the traditional sense. Just as knowing how to read and write allowed upward socioeconomic mobility for many Americans in previous centuries—and not knowing how to read or write excluded many other Americans—ICT literacy or illiteracy may be a defining factor in the twenty-first century. The congressional witness also emphasized that there are millions of adults who are about to suddenly find themselves functionally illiterate in the new economy, and that this should be considered an issue of profound importance (cited in "The Digital Divide," 2001, 6). Taylor reinforces this point when he writes that the dangers of the digital divide are not "merely an apocalyptic vision." He points out that while a digitally illiterate class stands in line at the bank, a new "digital class" already does its banking, stock trading, or other financial transactions—including tax-free online shopping—advantageously over broadband Internet connections.

The term "broadband" (high-speed data transfer) leads to yet another aspect of the digital divide to be explored more fully below and that is the various technologies that determine the speed of data transfer and how these technologies relate to the geography and demographics of the United States. Not only may there be a digital divide based on race and social class, but there may also be a digital divide between households with high-speed broadband Internet access and those who only have access to the Internet through modems hooked up to standard telephone lines. Thus, the type of ICT infrastructure itself may also create yet another kind of digital divide. In any case, the various types of digital divides in the United States cause Taylor to conclude that "taken all together, these tiny, day-to-day advantages potentially add up to a class gap of Dickensian proportions" (2000, 7).

Further Insights

The Demographic Digital Divide. Although it is important to recognize the possibility of an expanding digital divide comprised of the information "haves" and "have nots", some studies show that the digital divide is actually decreasing with time. This makes sense from the standpoint of market economics. Perhaps possession of ICT is working much the same way owning a car or a television worked in previous periods of American history. The rich first possessed these things, but today there is a television in nearly every American home. As the cost of computers decreases and as more second-hand computers enter the market, ICT may be trickling down to the less economically privileged classes. A 2001 study carried out by researchers in Boston revealed that fully one-third of all Internet subscribers in the United States had been online for less than a year. Interestingly, the study found that "about 60 percent of those newcomers were women and many of them were from the lower and lower-middle economic classes, which reflects that Internet usage is quickly crossing gender, class, and ethnic barriers" ("The Digital Divide," 2001, 21). The previously mentioned US Department of Commerce study on the digital divide, "Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion," confirms this finding. The government study found that the gap in Internet usage is closing between the overall population and minority groups. According to the study, in a twenty-month period "Internet usage among Hispanics in the US nearly doubled, from 12.6 percent of the population to 23.6 percent" ("The Digital Divide," 2001, 23). By 2013, just 15 percent of American adults aged eighteen years and older did not use the Internet, with 7 percent of nonusers reporting lack of infrastructure to connect to the Internet, 19 percent citing the expense of owning a computer or Internet access, 32 percent citing their technological illiteracy as a barrier to their access and reporting fear and frustration at trying to access the Internet; and 34 percent dismissing Internet access as irrelevant to their needs.

But there is one important difference between the marvels of ICT and the previous marvels of the automobile and the television. The advantage to owning an automobile was immediately obvious, and the entertainment value of television was also quite apparent; but the power and value of ICT is not nearly as obvious. This may be why research indicates that many of those on the dark side of the digital divide are neither enthusiastic nor concerned about obtaining and using the new technology. Taylor writes that professors at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a large-scale study of patterns of Internet usage, and the study found that a large percentage of those without Internet access "were simply not interested in getting online" (Taylor et al, 2000, 16). A US survey by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the Consumers Union (CU) supports the UCLA findings. The survey reported that 40 percent of the "unconnected" survey respondents had no plans to get connected in the future ("The Digital Divide," 2001, 8). Thus, the role of education in ICT may prove very important in further narrowing the digital divide.

The Geographic Digital Divide. Stephanie Hawkins (2005) cites a 2003 study by C. Ann Hollifield and Joseph F. Donnermeyer that supports the NTIA understanding of access, but the authors argue that it actually depends on the specific type of access available to a person, and that the lower-cost, modem dial-up Internet technology will not close the divide. Hawkins notes that many researchers have pointed out that lack of ICT infrastructure causes rural citizens to face what is essentially a digital divide. The NTIA and the US Rural Utilities Service (RUS) released a report on broadband services that supports this point of view. According to the report, an Internet infrastructure with a higher data transfer rate must be developed in rural areas, which means "access merely to telephone services will no longer adequately connect people to the information economy" (Hawkins, 2005, p. 175). This seems quite likely true if we consider the data transfer requirements for much of the present "Web 2.0" technology. Most interactive website technology cannot be effectively delivered through an old 56k modem because the amount of data is too great for the low transfer rate. Web 2.0 needs support from broadband architecture, and in the future the need for high-speed broadband connection on the Internet will only increase. Thus, there is a divide between those with broadband access and those accessing the Internet through traditional telephone lines. To access the exponentially increasing amount of content on the Web, "it will be increasingly important in the coming years to have broadband access capable of carrying large amounts of data" ("The Digital Divide," 2001, 13). The same NTIA/RUS report also asserted that broadband service in rural areas has an uncertain future because rural economies cannot pay for the costly construction. The report proposes that broadband services could be supplied to rural communities via satellite in the future, but Hawkins points out that, "satellite manufacturers and deploying companies are currently facing financial difficulties of their own" (Hawkins, 2005, p. 175). In its eighth Broadband Progress Report, released in 2012, the Federal Communications Commission found that 100 million American lived in areas where broadband was available but they were not subscribers because they could not afford a monthly Internet-access subscription. An additional nineteen million Americans had no option to buy fixed broadband service. A growing number of Americans rely on smartphones for Internet access, but phones fall short of the ease of use and functionality offered by a computer with Internet access.

The costly building of broadband infrastructure in rural America is creating a digital divide that puts rural communities at economic disadvantage at present and for the future. The lack of rural broadband infrastructure is entirely economic. As Hawkins and other researchers point out, "Internet service providers (ISPs) and Internet technologies (e.g., digital subscriber lines [DSLs], cable modems, telephone cables, broadband, and satellites) exist in those areas where there is a strong demand and providing such services is economically viable" (Rowe, 2003, cited in Hawkins, 2005, p. 174). Market economies function according to a fundamental principle of economic viability. Hawkins notes that rural North America is on average much poorer than urban North America, and is also sparsely populated, so it is understandable that a lower percentage of the population has computers and that a broadband Internet infrastructure is slow to develop in these places (Hawkins, 2005, p. 174).

By way of analogy, we can see the same phenomenon historically with electricity. The cost of creating the infrastructure, building miles of power lines to rural America, was prohibitive for many years because private companies could not justify the investment when they considered the profits. As a consequence, much of rural America was still without electricity even decades after people living in cities were conveniently flipping on their light switches. This same market economy scenario is why many people living in rural areas of the United States still do not have broadband access. J. Bordewich (1999) points out that "leaving it entirely to the private sector to bring high-speed Internet service to everyone will mean the places that need it the most — lightly populated or economically stagnant regions — may be the last to get it" (Bordewich, 1999, 11). That is why some experts propose that the US government step in to coordinate a large-scale broadband wiring of the countryside. Bordewich argues, "what the United States needs today are high-speed on-ramps for everyone to ride the information superhighway. And once they're on, there will be an even larger, more dynamic market for e-business" (Bordewich, 1999, 22).

However, it may take more than just the availability of Internet to convince some disconnected citizens of the advantages in connecting to it. This may be particularly true for the rural digital divide. Hawkins cites a 2001 study by Lentz that focused on one of the most impoverished and disconnected areas of the United States, the Mississippi Delta region. The researchers investigated how the presence of telecommunications industries in the region influenced people's use of and access to ICT. Lentz found that, even with the increased presence of telecommunications companies, these rural counties of the Delta region did not significantly develop economically. The author concludes "policies must be initiated to enhance education, which will in turn have the effect of enabling people to use ICT effectively" (Hawkins, 2005, p. 179). Education may be an important key to closing the digital divide. The UCLA study cited above found that 86.3 percent of people in the United States with college degrees use the Internet, but the percentage falls to 31.2 percent for people without high school degrees ("The Digital Divide," 2001, 9).

Viewpoints

Closing the Digital Divide through Education. Rather than defining the digital divide as simply a matter of having access to the Internet, some authors argue that "access" actually consists of three things: devices, conduits, and computer literacy. In this context, the definition of "literacy" resonates with the arguments presented to the congressional hearing about a new form of illiteracy, digital illiteracy. Digital literacy means a person is adept in "interpreting and coding information." Digital literacy, then, is a blend of, "the traditional definition of literacy (i.e., reading and understanding the printed word) with information literacy, which relates to the effective acquisition and appropriate utilization of information" (Hawkins, 2005, p. 186). Gorski and Clark make the same point and add to this that an approach to eradicating the digital divide that is based only on equalizing the number of computers across all schools and classrooms "fails to consider the sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic inequities that provide a nurturing context for the digital divide and other symptoms of institutional and systemic oppression" (2003, p. 29). They argue that supplying computers and Internet access for all of the nation's schools is "only the tip of the iceberg." There are still questions pertaining to:

• The contemporariness and speed of both the computer and Internet technology;
• Teacher preparedness to use and teach with these technologies; and
• Teacher preparedness to use and teach with these technologies in progressive multicultural ways must be addressed (Gorski & Clark, 2003, p. 29).

B. Eon-Ok and S. Freehling (2007) cite studies showing that students who have strong Internet skills have a more positive attitude toward using the Internet as an educational resource. Once students have positive attitudes about using the Internet as an educational resource, then the effectiveness of the Internet as an educational tool increases. The authors of the study showed these findings concluded effective ICT use by students was dependent both on teacher encouragement and on support for the use of the technology within the specific course content being taught" (Eon-Ok & Freehling, 2007, p. 38).

Eon-Ok and Freehling also point out that teachers often believe that students from low-income backgrounds do not have sufficient Internet access inside or outside the school setting, and this perception causes teachers to minimize schoolwork and homework that requires Internet access. The authors cite another study that concludes "teachers were reluctant to assign Internet assignments to be completed outside of the classroom, because the teachers felt that such practices were unfair to those students who did not have household ICT access" (Eon-Ok & Freehling, 2007, p. 38). However, other studies also point out that teachers are highly influential in getting students to use ICT educationally inside and outside of the classroom (Eon-Ok & Freehling, 2007, p. 38). Teachers should encourage Internet use as an educational tool because this will increase the digital literacy of students and that may be the most important factor in closing the digital divide.

However, some researchers point out that it is a mistake to think that digital literacy and equal access for all people will inherently create an economic utopia. Hawkins cites a study on community technology centers (CTCs) in low-income, urban areas that revealed "increased use of ICT could only slightly 'level the playing field' in terms of social and economic opportunities" (p. 184). Researchers from the same study argue that closing the digital divide through CTCs "cannot be considered a 'panacea' for city-centre poverty" (Hawkins, 2005, p. 184). Nevertheless, increasing digital literacy and narrowing the digital divides, whether in poverty-stricken urban or rural areas, is an important step. Research indicates that the two most important answers for narrowing that divide are to build up a nationwide infrastructure and to use the Internet more effectively in the nation's classrooms.

Terms & Concepts

Broadband: Telecommunication which uses a wide band of frequencies to transmit information. Information can be multiplexed and sent over many different frequencies or channels simultaneously within the band. This allows more information to be transmitted in a given amount of time.

Community Technology Centers (CTCs): CTCs were developed by the US Department of Education to provide computer access and educational services using information technology. The program created or expanded community technology centers in economically distressed urban and rural communities and provided access to information technology as well as training.

Consumer Federation of America (CFA): An advocacy, research, education, and service organization. The CFA investigates consumer issues, behavior, and attitudes using surveys, polling, focus groups, and literature reviews. The findings are published in reports that assist consumer advocates and policymakers.

Consumers Union (CU): An expert, independent, nonprofit organization, whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers. Consumers Union also has more than five hundred thousand online activists who work to change legislation and the marketplace in favor of the consumer interest (www.consumersunion.org).

Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs): Technology that provides digital data transmission over the local telephone network lines. DSL speeds are based on the distance between the customer and company's central office. It is slower in rural areas because the distance does not allow for fast synchronization.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT): An broad term that includes any communication device or application such as radio, television, cellular phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems, etc., as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs): Are companies that provide access to the Internet for a monthly fee. The service provides software, username, password, and access.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA): A bureau of the US Department of Commerce, which serves as the president's principal adviser on telecommunications and information policy issues, and in this role frequently works with other executive branch agencies to develop and present the administration's position on these issues. NTIA also performs telecommunications research and engineering, including resolving technical telecommunications issues for the federal government and private sector; and administers infrastructure and public telecommunications facilities grants (www.educause.edu).

Rural Utilities Service (RUS): A government agency within the US Department of Agriculture. The telecommunications section administrator and staff concentrate on the financial details of individual RUS projects.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Bertolucci, J. (2008). ISP bandwidth limits make a comeback. PC World; 26: 41-42. Retrieved September 8, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=33880962&site=ehost-live

Hesseldahl, A. (2008, August 28). Universities try out new digital devices. Business Week Online; p. 6. Retrieved September 4, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=34159041&site=ehost-live

Rogers, A. (2016). Building the superhighway for information and commerce: how the e-government can save money by building bridges across the digital divide. Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 22(1), 163–185. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=123894099&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Sangmoon, K. (2003). The impact of unequal access to the Internet on earnings: A cross-sectional analysis. Perspectives on Global Development & Technology; 2: 215-236. Retrieved September 6, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12914907&site=ehost-live

Sharma, D. (2004). Cultural pathways through the information age. New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development; 2004: 3-23. Retrieved August 26, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=14400931&site=ehost-live

Smith, D. T., & Graham, R. (2012). Household expenditures on information and communication technologies: a proposal for a digital practice model. Race, Gender, & Class, 19(3/4), 161–178. Retrieved October 29, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=84011950