Global digital divide

by Roxanne Kubiak and Martina Mowforth● Can anyone give a few reasons why

peripheral and core countries care about digital access?

● So it's key to look at who has access!

The latest table on...

Credit to www.internetworldstats.com

It's not as simple as just having access!

I'm a visual learner (Don't worry about notes we posted our scripts!)

The internet will spread everywhere ultimatelyRogers (1995) notes early adopters typically require the innovationto hold some obvious advantage for them (given the high initial costs of adoption),and progress is therefore relatively slow. As more and more people,organizations and nations adopt a technology, however, a critical mass beginsto build, exerting ‘‘homophilic pressure’’ on all ‘‘laggards’’ to adopt the technology.Adoption rates climb sharply until the ‘‘market’’ (i.e., the pool ofpotential adopters) is saturated and adoption rates begin to level off. In sum,then, the closing gap between North American penetration rates and otherregions is to be expected.

Global citiesHypothesis 1: Net of other global and national economic influences, nations with large urbanpopulations should accelerate the effect of previous demand for Internet consumption.

Fertility rates and younger populations

Hypothesis 2: Higher fertility will reduce Internet development while higher percentages ofyoung adults will promote Internet development.

Economic development's interaction with the influence of democratized governance

Hypothesis 3: Economic development reduces the effect of political liberalization on Internet development.

Chacha and jingjing

Chinese Invictus gaming win Dota 2 international 2012

Conflict and violence

Hypothesis 4: Socio-political conflict will undermine Internet development.

Military coup egypt

Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War in Iraq at the Independence Visitor Center, Philadelphia, PAPhoto by John Fischer

FindingsMeliha Varesanovic, working in Sarajevo in 1995, during the longest siege of a capital city in modern history. - from a cracked article

Conclusion

Nations wanting to accelerate their participation in the global digital network:

→ need to implement polices that reduce fertility rates to more sustainable levels, allowing for the emergence of a population of young and productive workers whose resources are not drained by very largedependent populations.→ prevent acts of violence even at the lower level. The good news that emerges from the lack of adverse effects of more severe forms of conflict or state failure on Internet development is that nations plagued by ongoing legacies of strife are not permanently disabled from participation in the global network.→ the observation that economics at a certain point reduces the positive effects of democratization may also signal good news in that even authoritarian states are embracing the Internet. The Internet has become so vitally important for financial reasons that even autocratic states are going online. Internet use in their society may in turn breed democratic movements, combined with supercharging effect of large urban areas on subsequent Internet growth, urbanized authoritarian societies might their grip.

Limits to the findings:limited by the available data which at present is confined to broad surveys of Internet usage and does not tap the scope or intensity of usage among users or across social group lines within nation-states . - so it's not looking at things on a national level or the demogaphics involved, it's also unable to investigate how the users are using the internet, the study already dicusses that younge generations are early adopters of internet and that this is beneficial they are digitally literate they are digital natives however, what about the digital literacy of older generations and it's impact. What about what different users use the internet for. There are other studies on these things but they are mainly in more developed countries.Another limit is although the internet has been around for quite some time now it's still in it's early stages, so these hypotheses are tentative and factors that may encourage early adoptees may not be the same factors to encourage laggards.Finally, little research has considered the effects of Internet diffusion and the digital divide on international economic development.

ReferencesE Siapera 2012 Chapter 3 Understanding New Media. Sage.

Chinn, M. D. & Fairlie, R. W. (2007). The determinants of the global digital divide: a cross-country analysis of computer and internet penetration. Oxford Economic Papers, 59(1), 16-44.

Robison, K. K. & Crenshaw, E. M. (2010) Reevaluating the Global Digital Divide: Socio-demographic Conflict Barriers to the Internet Revolution*. Sociological Inquiry, 80(1), 34-62.