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The Role of the Habitus in Shaping Discourses about the Digital Divide
Abstract
In this ethnographic study, I examine the discourses that social agents enact as they increase their awareness of information technology (IT) and the digital divide. The social agents in this study are authorities in the municipal government and African-American adults taking part in a community technology initiative in an urban, working-class neighborhood. The findings suggest that both participants and authorities adopted a narrow perspective on IT as a production tool to support business-related skills such as word processing and spreadsheets, which were believed to broaden access to employment opportunities. Despite the rapid growth in Internet-based applications and services as a justifying discourse of the authorities who create and manage the community technology training program, computer networking was not an important part of the program curriculum. The habitus is used as a theoretical lens for explaining the prevailing perceptions of IT as a production-oriented tool, why these perceptions reflect the social milieu of urban working-class communities, and how these perceptions engender discourses that may unwittingly reinforce social inequities that structure the digital divide.
... Access to computers and the Internet alone have been proved insufficient to make meaningful impact if individuals do not possess the basic skills and other resources to take advantage of technology ( [8]; [12]; [5]). [5] argues that public access and computer training though justified, is not enough to address other "social forces" that may limit those endeavours. ...
... Access to computers and the Internet alone have been proved insufficient to make meaningful impact if individuals do not possess the basic skills and other resources to take advantage of technology ( [8]; [12]; [5]). [5] argues that public access and computer training though justified, is not enough to address other "social forces" that may limit those endeavours. The issue is therefore not only about access but also about use or ability to take advantage of technologyneeds that cannot be dissociated from other social and economic factors such as poverty and literacy level. ...
... Literacy acquisition requires variety of resources and the development of skills, knowledge with the right attitude, physical access to devices and motivation to make meaningful use of technology. All these are matters of not only education but also of power and privilege ( [12]; [5]). [12] proposes range of resources that will need to be mobilized for ICT access for the social inclusion of disadvantaged communities. ...
The study seeks to find more efficient and sustainable ways to support life-long learning with ICT in the Ghanaian rural setting, to explore the possible impact of using Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to support teaching and learning in rural community to promote consistent capacity building of residents, the impact of improved access to ICT on information literacy, usage and employability in the rural communities.
... (Murray, 2007) outlines distinctive features and some examples of synchronous and asynchronous e-learning as shown in Table 1 below. Kvasny (2005), endorsing public access and computer training though justified, it is not enough to address other "social forces" that may limit those endeavors. The issue is therefore not only about access but also about use or ability to take advantage of technologyneeds that cannot be dissociated from other social and economic factors such as poverty and literacy level. ...
... ICT access for advancement of social inclusion will have to be rooted in harnessing of range of resources developed and promoted to enhance the socio-economic status of the target communities. All these are matters of not only education but also of power and privilege (Warschauer, 2003;Kvasny, 2005 Figure 1). ...
... It is important, at this point to state that this study does not assume a technology deterministic stancethe belief that technology shapes social practices including learningas this have been proven to be problematic(Warschauer, 2002;Kvasny, 2005; Connole and Oliver, 2007). The primary focus of this study is not only on access but also on usage within the context of teaching and learning and to assess impact (tentatively) of the intervention. ...
... therefore also demonstrates how social and personal identities may shape and be shaped through interactions with communication technologies (Douglas, 1999;Eglash and Bleecker, 2001;Kvasny, 2005). This study is important precisely because of how these issues are intertwined in the actors' use of communication technologies for activism. ...
... Emphasizing basic computer literacy and using connectivity primarily to download material, or for running one's own business website, is, to the activists, a paucity of vision (see Meinrath, 2005;Sandvig, Young & Meinrath, 2004;Tapia, Maitlin & Stone, 2006). It is also paternalist; notions commonly expressed by lawmakers and some nonprofit organizations tend to imagine the ''users'' as wards of the state (Dunbar-Hester, 2009; see also see Kvasny, 2005). Rather, Pandora and other activists favoring community wi-fi see it as extending beyond the provision of Internet service; instead, their interest flows from their vision of wi-fi networks as platforms for community media. ...
... Some were enthusiastic, and a person who worked closely with residents said that ''This is a chance [for residents of Larch Park] to not just keep up with society, but to advance beyond it, people want to use this to start businesses and for education'' (Fieldnotes, 3/1/05). This is an allusion to the historic exclusion of African-Americans from technological decisionmaking and technological ''progress'' (Fouché, 2006, p. 642; see also Kvasny, 2005). The Pandora organizers were concerned that the residents' interest stopped short of their own agenda, which included social change through community media, not merely Internet connectivity (Fieldnotes, 3/1/05). ...
This article follows media activists trying to transform the media system by broadening access to technology and skills. These activists intend for technological engagement to be compatible with a range of social identities, but their hopes are not always achieved. It is difficult to cultivate forms of technical affinity and expertise not associated with White masculinity, though the activists are more successful with regard to inclusion of women than of people of color. This case study provides an opportunity to analyze how social and personal identities may shape, and be shaped through, interactions with communication technologies, as well as the ramifications of technologically-oriented activism in the wider array of efforts to secure a more democratic media environment.
... Conceptualizing the school community as owning instructional technology with administrators, teachers, and students being technology stewards may alleviate such challenges. Kvasny's (2005) description of a situation involving presumptuous imposition of policies without user input illustrates negative consequence of bias decision making. Burke's (2005) advocation of bottom-to-top efforts to network with school communities, recommendations of networking with administrative communities, and encouragement of involvement in classroom decision-making represents a sound strategy. ...
... Administrative. Kvasny (2005) describes the consequences of a situation where policy-makers misunderstood or misinterpreted the technological and learning needs of this community. Owing an absence of user input, the endeavor lacked appropriateness in the views of the intended users, and thus triggered their resource misuse and abandonment. ...
... Within an open information system, school districts would disclose its bases for purchasing curricula related software and for distributing hardware to schools. Scholarship concerning administrative decision making related to technology (Kvasny, 2005;Monke, 1998) indicates that when these processes are made privately and without input from all stakeholders, the outcomes tend to be problematic. ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore a framework for considering moral K‐12 instructional technology. It seeks to examine the extent that development of technology policies consider and respect affected parties' interests.
Design/methodology/approach
– Interpreting morality as an economic concept that involves a reconciliation of societal members' diverse needs and wants, the authors describe moral instruction technology use as a negotiation of administrative, teaching and learning needs along five continua defined by Mason, in 1986 and Peace and Hartzel in 2002: property, freedom of speech, privacy, accessibility, and accountability. The paper commences with observations concerning research into technology‐based empowerment and associated ethical issues. It then describes the five continua of ethical instructional technology challenges within the contexts of K‐12 settings.
Findings
– The authors encourage research through observational and survey studies to clarify understandings of these continua. Although presented separately, they acknowledge that these dimensions overlap and interact to comprise a mesh of moral dilemmas. If morality represents a concept designed to balance societal powers, then implementation of moral instructional technology processes respects the views of all educators. The authors argue that how educators interpret technology's placements along these moral continua have important consequences for practice. They encourage research that interprets these relationships and how they may best support classroom processes.
Originality/value
– The paper presents an exploratory framework, offering insights into ethical issues in instructional technology.
... Moreover, ICT utilization inequalities in the general population are found also in industrialized countries, determined by education level, gender, and income (Kvasny, 2005;Kvasny and Keil, 2002;Lu, 2001;Trauth, 2003). These inequalities are also seen within developing countries, where urban and upper-class citizens enjoy the benefits of Internet and ICTs. ...
... Sixth, healthcare providers in developing countries and international organizations have begun to consider telemedicine as a solution to the existing healthcare problems (ITU, 2000;UNDP, 2001;WHO, 2005;WB, 2001;Wootton, 2001b). In addition, the effects of ICTs on local factors such as government policies, economics, politics, social, cultural and infrastructure issues have also attracted the interest of international researchers and practitioners (Avgerou and Walsham, 2000;Cherry, 2004;Kvasny, 2005;Odedra-Straub, 1996); for example, Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) studies the social and cultural implications of information and telecommunication technologies and systems in developing counties. These studies highlight socio-economic and cultural differences (Bada, 1995(Bada, , 2000D'Mello, 2003;Heeks, 2002b;Moyo, 1996;Musa, 2006) and the impact of these relations on information technology, which is becoming more recognized (AMCIS, 2004;Information Society, 2002;Mansell and When, 1998). ...
... We also preferred a theory which had already been used to examine issues of gender and ICTs 1 . In particular we reviewed Bourdieu's notion of habitus (Bourdieu 1990) as it has been used to understand gender differences (McNay 1999;Kvasny 2005); Feminist Standpoint Theory (Ratliff 2006;Nsibirano 2008); Critical Information Systems research on frameworks of power (Trauth and Howcroft 2006); and Expectations States Theory (Adibifar 2007). ...
... Some researchers have criticised habitus for being an unchanging, "obstinate" set of dispositions (McNay 1999;Thapan 2006). Recently habitus has been adapted to understand gender identity (Laberge 1995;Johnson 2005), to explore the specific experiences of African -American women using ICTs (Kvasny 2005) and to unpack gender and mobile learning (Taylor). Its value in terms of our data is that it provides a multi-faceted way of exploring several dimensions: power relations, social status and economically opposed structures; individuals' past experiences and life histories; and taken-forgranted cultural assumptions. ...
This paper examines findings from two surveys of 10110 university students conducted in South Africa in 2004 and 2007, and explores a theoretical lens for taking the work further. We report on the differences between male and females students' access to and use of ICTs for learning. In particular we note that whilst equal opportunities do largely exist for both genders, there are subtle differences in terms of female students' practical access and sense of personal agency. Findings about use are complicated with male students using ICTs more frequently particularly in the sciences disciplines and for activities such as information seeking and communication (in contrast to research elsewhere). In order to try and better understand our findings and to better focus the qualitative phase of the research currently being undertaken as a result of the findings reported on in this paper, we explore four different theoretical perspectives: Bourdieu's notion of habitus; Feminist Standpoint Theory; Critical Information Systems Theory; and Expectations States Theory. We then suggest using Bourdieu's notion of habitus as our theoretical focus as we believe it offers us the most flexibility whilst enabling a gender focus to be maintained.
... Moreover, other studies suggest that accessibility influences the ways in which ICTs are used. For example a study by Kvasny (2005) comparing usage of ICTs among the poorer innercity communities in the USA to the wealthier suburban communities found support that lower levels of access propagated illiteracy in ICTs and subsequently reinforced low levels of ICT usage (Kvasny, 2005). Another example is the study by Meso et al., (2005), in which accessibility was one of the factors found to significantly impact the extent to which mobile ICTs are used for business. ...
... Moreover, other studies suggest that accessibility influences the ways in which ICTs are used. For example a study by Kvasny (2005) comparing usage of ICTs among the poorer innercity communities in the USA to the wealthier suburban communities found support that lower levels of access propagated illiteracy in ICTs and subsequently reinforced low levels of ICT usage (Kvasny, 2005). Another example is the study by Meso et al., (2005), in which accessibility was one of the factors found to significantly impact the extent to which mobile ICTs are used for business. ...
This study extends the Technological culturation (TC) model ,proposed ,by Straub ,et al. by examining,the influences of two ,additional constructs - accessibility of technology ,(AT) and perceived,socio-economic ,prospects ,(PSEP) - on ,the usage ,(U) of information ,and communications,technologies ,(ICTs). Research question ,was: In addition ,to technological culturation, do “accessibility of ICTs” and “individuals’ perceptions of the socio-economic prospects” influence the usage ,of ICTs? The instrument ,measured ,the extent to which
... ewell, 2001). Government programming and policy often attempts to respond to the Divide by providing money and resources to educational institutions and communities, and this is supported by a study which suggests urban school districts appear to be addressing the Digital Divide although inequalities in computer access remain (Hess and Leal, 2001). Kvasny (2005), however, believes the Divide can not be overcome with a distributive solution that reallocates computing resources, primarily because it is ahistorical and technologically deterministic. ...
... The government perspective towards the Divide seems to address the gap in resource allocation, this but does little to recognize other issues discussed in the debate. While some view this as an ineffective bridge to close the Divide (Kvasny, 2005), it is important to note that many communities and institutions do benefit from resource allocation alone, and these efforts should not be dismissed. There are many, documented instances where government funded programs are shown to be successful in serving students and individuals in low-income populations (Bransford, 2001; Hess and Leal, 2002; Roach, 2002a; Roach, 2002b). ...
... These concepts combine the material resources and skills necessary to navigate a technology-driven, digitally mediated social environment [35,36]. Directly connected to the notion of digital/techno capital, the concept of technological habitus has emerged as a bridge between the collective technology practices embedded in the habitus and individual actions [37,38]. Specifically, some scholars have used the concept of digital habitus to describe the continuous use and engagement with digital technologies [39], contributing to the layering of habitus across generations [40]. ...
This study employs the Bourdieusian concept of habitus to explore how users' mental dispositions are associated with both their eco-conscious use of digital technologies and online behaviours. The digital-environmental habitus, reflecting such a combination of digital technology use and environmental attitudes, is explored through an online survey of 1188 participants. Factorial analyses are used to measure the environmental orientation of digital users, their digital expertise, and the digital-environmental habitus, encompassing both awareness and behavioural dimensions. We then use a path structural model to investigate the relationship among these constructs. The results indicate that pro-environmental dispositions are associated with digital pro-environmental awareness and behaviours. The existence of digital-specific environmental awareness also enhances pro-environmental digital behaviours, emphasising the importance of educating users about the environmental impact of digital tools. While digital expertise alone does not significantly predict digital-environmental awareness, it does moderate the digital-environmental habitus's behavioural aspect, promoting behaviours mutually beneficial for users and the environment. Further research is needed to understand how benefit-oriented and eco-centric environmentalism manifests in the digital arena.
... In general, this theory gave the concepts of structure-agent and objectivism-subjectivism a dialectical character, connecting concepts such as habitus, field (surrounding environment) and capital (resources). Bourdieu's idea of habitus is suitable for understanding and studying practice as the interplay of structures and humans as agents, whose action takes place in the educational environment [8]. ...
... Although habitus is "probably Bourdieu's most contested concept" (Reay, 2004, p. 432), it offers new perspectives to approach the connection between digital social inequality and social group differences. For example, Kvasny (2005) and Robinson (2009) observed how people from distinct sociodemographic backgrounds formed different perceptions of and usage patterns for information technologies that, as they indicated, would lead to more digital social inequalities. ...
Although age is commonly identified as a key explanatory variable in Internet adoption and use, digital divide studies have not fully explicated why generational differences are associated with disparities in social media use. This study explores how age can function in constituting a distinctive habitus in China. A comparative analysis on Chinese born in the 1970s and 1990s-cohorts identified in prior literature as having distinct sociotechnical educational experiences in China-was conducted on 429 Chinese Internet users. Results indicated significant differences among the 1970s-born and 1990s-born cohorts in their online experiences, exposure, and education, which, in turn, were associated with differences in their social media habituses, capital-enhancing activities, and memetic engagements. Findings here act as an empirical reference to illustrate connections between age differences, digital capital, and habitus, as well as contribute to deepened understandings of how culture influences global digital inequalities.
... In further research, the present study may be complemented by a study of discourses of women and girls in the IT industry using Bourdieu's habitus (Lizardo, 2004;McNay, 1999;Bourdieu, 2000) as a theoretical lens, following the approach used by Kvasny (2005) to study digital divide. The concept of habitus incorporates both individual experiences and societal influences, and thus, by bridging individual-level and social-structural aspects (Miner et al., 2018), may offer a rich understanding of how individual experiences, societal influences, and relevant forms of capital that women and girls may possess or perceive to possess, such as cultural, social, navigational, technical, and economic capital (Joshi et al., 2016;Bourdieu, 1990) accumulate and interact to form social positions of women with respect to IT employment. ...
Purpose
The authors aim to contribute to the understanding of the enduring underrepresentation of women in the IT industry by analysing media discourse triggered by a campaign intended to encourage women to join the IT industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Internet media coverage of the Little Miss Geek campaign in the UK was analysed as qualitative data to reveal systematic and coherent patterns contributing to the social construction of the role of women with respect to the IT industry and IT employment.
Findings
While ostensibly supporting women's empowerment, the discourse framed women's participation in the IT industry as difficult to achieve, focused on women's presumed “feminine” essential features (thus, effectively implying that they are less suitable for IT employment than men), and tasked women with overcoming the barrier via individual efforts (thus, implicitly blaming them for the imbalance). In these ways, the discourse worked against the broader aims of the campaign.
Social implications
Campaigns and organisations that promote women's participation should work to establish new frames, rather than allowing the discourse to be shaped by the established frames.
Originality/value
The authors interpret the framing in the discourse using Bourdieu's perspective on symbolic power: the symbolic power behind the existing patriarchal order expressed itself via framing, thus contributing to the maintenance of that order. By demonstrating the relevance of Bourdieu's symbolic power, the authors offer a novel understanding of how underrepresentation of women in the IT sector is produced and maintained.
... Habitus. Habitus is essential for understanding practice as the interplay of structural forces and human agency (Kvasny, 2005). It is a system of 'durable, transposable dispositions' (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 53) functioning on the practical level as categories of perception and assessment or as classification principles as well as being the organising principles of action (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 13). ...
Purpose-This study outlines the role of accounting in an agencification context. It explores the everyday accounting in semi-autonomous agencies by observing micro-processes of agencification, i.e. the use of semi-autonomous agencies to deliver public services. Design/methodology/approach-To fully grasp how the practice unfolded in real time, ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in five agencies and one supervisory ministry in Indonesia. Participant observation was used by witnessing the ongoing processes, events, situated moments, and routines either at the collective or individual level. Findings-Using practice-based views, the study unveils how everyday accountings are consequential in structuring the contours of agencification. Accounting practices constitute agencification by shaping organisational patterns and relations characterised by a high circulation of numbers and performance metrics. Meanwhile, agencification emerges through and is constituted by the aggregation of interrelated accounting practices. It gives way to accounting-led agencies by providing more space for calculative initiatives performed by agency managers and staff to conduct and conceive their everyday tasks with reference to accounting, and use accounting to shape and pursue agencification objectives. Originality/value-The study suggests that practice theory enhances scholarly understanding on agencification by providing a rich analytical framework to uncover why and how accounting practices are organised. This view provides a way of understanding the various activities involved in agencification in relation to each other as several bundles of accounting activity. This further demonstrates how accounting can be studied and viewed as a social practice.
... The authors refer to a continuous redefinition of an individual's habitus according to the field's evolution, which, in turn, can lead to a shift in attitude and practice. Some scholars refer to technological habitus as the interaction between collective practice absorbed by the habitus and individual action (Costa, 2014;Kvasny, 2005). More specifically, digital habitus might be interpreted as a continuous engagement with digital technologies (Richardson, 2015) that differentiates users from previous generations (Zevenbergen, 2007). ...
This article uses adopts a revised version of the concept of techno-environmental habitus to investigate and make sense of the differentiation among digital technology users’ attitudes towards the environment in England. Digital–environmental habitus refers to the combination of structural determinants (existing background) and the metabolised increased use of digital technologies in people’s everyday life that also interacts with individual environmental attitudes. The results of a national survey among English parents between 20 and 55 years suggest that parents’ education levels, gender, age and income play a role in increasing their awareness about the environmental-friendly use of digital technologies. This study shows that the digital–environmental habitus of parents in England is layered according to the combination of existing socioeconomic traits and individual capacity and willingness to adapt to a drastic increase in both the use of digital technologies (due to the social distancing imposed by the pandemic) and environmental degradation.
... The above-mentioned "chameleon" capacity of habitus has been studied separately in relation to technology use and environmental dispositions, respectively. On the one hand, the technological habitus has often been studied as an interaction between collective practice embodied in the habitus and individual action (Costa, 2014;Kvasny, 2005). It has been suggested that technology, interpreted as "social artefact", cannot be separated from social practices, by contrast identifying a process of negotiation in relation to the field of use (Sterne, 2003). ...
This paper conceptualizes the techno-environmental habitus to explore differentiation among media users and their climate change awareness by adopting a dynamic concept that takes into consideration both pre-existing conditions and interactions with the technological field of action. The paper investigates the characteristics of multi-layered dispositions towards climate change in the U.K. through an online survey of a representative sample of the U.K. population (N=1,013). Results show that, despite the predominance of advocacy positions, four different techno-environmental habitus point to a fragmented landscape, but also a “chameleon”, transformative capacity of habitus, given that some common traits are shared by the groups. Beyond the four different patterns related to techno-environmental attitudes, one of the most interesting findings relates to the fatalistic techno-environmental habitus, which presents some traits in common with the scepticism and advocacy approaches but tends to be discouraged with regard to taking action. The identification of the nuances of techno-environmental habitus is relevant for climate change policy implementation because they may facilitate or hinder both individual and collective action.
... Later work in the literature by Hur (2016), Njenga (2018), andSerrano-Cinca et al. (2018) have elaborated on the need for a more expansive definition of digital divide and its related concept of digital exclusion (Brown & Czerniewicz, 2010;Gangadharan, 2017). According to Kvasny (2005), the digital divide is a political outcome rooted in the historical systems of power and privilege. Systems that have excluded women, racial and ethnic minorities in terms of employment, housing, health, education, and consumption opportunities. ...
As technology use permeates many parts of society there are still groups where the penetration of technology is low: adults with little exposure to technology during their traditional learning years, users from lower SES, lower education levels, resulting in a digital divide between the digital haves and have-nots. This paper presents a community-based, mixed methods research project that endeavored to study the phenomenon of digital divide through a set of theoretical frameworks: Rawls’ principles of justice as fairness provided the overall social justice umbrella, Sen’s capability approach grounded the study in the specificities of learners’ lives and acknowledged learner diversity, and Horton’s cultural education, Freire’s critical consciousness, and Eubanks’ critical technology education provided the pedagogical lens to understand the importance of the critical learning process in digital education. The findings from the study support the concept of situated or contextual technology that seeks to increase the benefits of technology for adult learners while providing them the tools to manage complex digital environments through relatable instruction, user-centric design for technological tools and interfaces, and more robust government action in alleviating the digital divide through well-designed digital literacy programs.
... Second, socioeconomic differences are considered to be a reason for the gender gap in ICT usage (Bimber, 2000;Goedhart et al., 2019;Helsper, 2010;Ono and Zavodny, 2007;van Deursen Alexander and Helsper Ellen, 2015). Bourdieu and Passeron's social reproduction theoretical framework, which suggests that technological innovation reinforces existing power relations and modes of consciousness that legitimize those relations, has been widely applied in this line of digital divide research (Bourdieu, 1984;Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977;Ignatow and Robinson, 2017;Kvasny, 2005;Kvasny and Keil, 2006;Livingstone and Helsper, 2007;Selwyn, 2004). Third, empirical studies show that even when women have access to a computer and the internet, they are still at a natural disadvantage regarding Internet usage due to deeply rooted sociocultural attitudes toward women's role in society (Antonio and Tuffley, 2014). ...
Purpose
Existing researches find that a gender difference exists in terms of Internet usage. In China, the singleton daughters resulting from China's one-child policy enjoy unprecedented parental support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether singleton daughters can, to some extent, break through the predicament of the digital divide.
Design/methodology/approach
The study collected data from a sample of 865 college students and obtained 811 valid questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used to identify clusters of Internet usage from the perspective of statistical associations in various daily online activities. Two-way ANOVA and mean-comparison tests are used to analyze how singleton and non-singleton students use the Internet differently.
Findings
This study finds that singleton female students showed no significant differences from male students in aspirational activities of informational, educational use and social media use, which means that singleton female students have caught up with male students in these activities. However, female college students from multi-child families were still found to be disadvantaged in those activities.
Originality/value
There is a lack of consensus on the classification of Internet activities. We used EFA to cluster the varieties of Internet activities into three types: utilitarian use, exploratory use and aspirational use. The three identified types of Internet usage require different degrees of user initiative. We argue that initiative provides a useful lens through which to classify Internet usage. In addition, this study is among the few studies to investigate the impact of the one-child policy on the gender digital divide.
... In contrast, the degree of formality and sociality are generally low, although it is logical to assume that every other form of digital literacy is partially based on this continuous process of internalizing dispositions as structured and structuring structures: in Bourdieu's (1979) view, dispositions derived from so-cial positions of activity but also dispositions as generative principles for new actions. Such dispositions are biographically embodied in long-term processes of social interaction in distinctive social fields in which they are put into practice, so subjects usually deploy them strategically even if they are not aware of it (Kvasny, 2006). As the more generalized form of literacy, unconscious literacy is associated with every technological device: in a long-lasting biographical experience, users learn not only how to technically operate devices but also particular ways in which, in their social worlds, these devices become practically useful. ...
The main goal of this article is to analyze young people’s technological socialization experiences to build a comprehensive model of the distinctive digital literacies interwoven with their biographies. Considering that digital accessibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion, we identify which types of digital literacies are linked to the acquisition of digital competencies, confidence, and dispositions towards the incorporation of ICTs into daily activities; on the other hand, we also identify digital literacies that might engender motivated processes of self-exclusion from the digital realm, therefore reinforcing subjects’ digital exclusion. Methodologically, this article is based on 30 in-depth biographically-oriented qualitative interviews with young people living in the region of Madrid, Spain. Regarding results, four techno-social dimensions are proposed—motivation, degree of formality, degree of sociality, and type of technological domestication—to construct a typology of four ideal forms of digital literacy: unconscious literacy, self-motivated literacy, professional literacy, and social support. To achieve digital inclusion, self-motivation towards using digital technologies is mandatory, but social practices, academic and professional literacy might work as a secondary socialization process that enhance subjects’ affinity with ICTs. Nevertheless, the effect of social support is ambivalent: It could promote digital inclusion among people already interested in digital technologies, but it could also lead to dynamics of self-exclusion among people who are not confident regarding their digital competencies or disinterested in ICTs.
... How one decides whether or not to activate one's kinds of capital is a matter of 'habitus', an understanding of practice as determined by an interplay of social structures and individual agency. The 'practice is generative of a historically- constructed habitus that is the product of the choices that have been made for and by social agents over time' (Kvasny 2005, n.p.). Habitus can change, while access to specific forms of objectified cultural capital, such as mobile phones, can have far reaching effects for individuals in terms of appropriating and maximising different forms of capital (Czerniewicz and Brown 2012). ...
Digital storytelling has entered Higher Education as a pedagogical tool for enhancing students digital literacies in digitally saturated contexts. Increasing access to freely available software programs for video production and the ubiquity of mobile technologies have made digital storytelling viable in resource-poor environments. This paper reports on an on-going project at a university of technology in South Africa employing both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, with the aim of understanding students perceptions of context-specific digital storytelling practices across various disciplines and student backgrounds. Pierre Bourdieus notions of field, habitus and capital as well as Tara Yossos community cultural wealth were applied to understand students perceptions of practices of digital storytelling that emerged from this project. We argue that complex technology projects, such as digital storytelling, are potentially viable in poorly-resourced environments, across disciplines and with students with diverse digital literacies and backgrounds, provided that: 1. technical barriers are lowered to the minimum and technologies are adopted that are freely available, owned by or easily accessible to students, 2. that the appropriate model is chosen based on these students social and cultural capital, and 3. that the community cultural wealth of students is considered in curriculum delivery.
... Many programs that aim to bridge racial and ethnic dispari ties in Internet access represent technology-centric fixes to deep-seated socioeconomic and political inequalities and have had no significant or long-term positive impacts on social inequities. In fact, by acting upon a world of structural inequalities, these technocentric solutions can even serve to replicate, reinforce, and create new patterns of disempowerment (Jung, Qiu, & Kim, 2001;Kvasny, 2005Kvasny, , 2006. In addition, such solutions shift the burden of empowerment from institutions to the underserved themselves. ...
... These efforts complicate notions of access by formulating it as multilayered phenomena influenced by technology, education, and social networks (Dijk, 2005;Mueller & Lentz, 2004;Van Dijk, 2006;Van Dijk & Hacker, 2003). One particular strand of this research frames Internet use in Pierre Bourdieu's theories of habitus, disposition, and multiple forms of capital (Brock, Kvasny, & Hales, 2010;Kvasny, 2005;Robinson, 2009Robinson, , 2011Rojas et al., 2012;Schradie, 2012;Tufecki, 2012). This approach directly engages with how differences in access emerge from inequities in social power. ...
PurposeThis study examines whether open Wi-Fi systems in Austin, Texas, have much effect in expanding digital inclusion. These systems were hailed a decade ago as means to provide low-cost access to disadvantaged groups, but these claims were also met with some skepticism.
Methodology/approachThis study uses secondary data analysis of a survey conducted by the City of Austin to assess what groups in the city are using the Internet. It uses descriptive statistics to get a sense of who is using the systems and then logistic regression models to see which factors lead to use of open Wi-Fi.
FindingsThe users of these systems may not have the resources to afford home broadband in many instances, but these systems are largely used by people with highly educated parents and comfort with computing. The Internet users are largely representative of Austin.
Practical implicationsSimply offering Internet services via Wi-Fi is likely ineffective in expanding Internet use among disadvantaged populations.
Social implicationsOrganizations who are interested in expanding Internet access to disadvantaged communities may want to consider how issues of social support may or may not be addressed by a project.
Originality/valueThis study attempts to apply Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of multiple forms of capital to a quantitative study using secondary data by constructing an index from existing survey items.
... Income or socio-economic status is one of the most commonly used factors for explaining use of the Internet (Martin & Robinson, 2007). The dimensions usually preferred for understanding the use of IT and participation are often income (Fuchs, 2009), gender, with men having more access and women using ICT less, although the difference is declining (Selwyn, 2006), age, where increased age is associated with lower levels of access and less use, education, with lower levels of education corresponding to divides related to access and range of use (Roe & Broos, 2005), family structure, where school-age children seem to increase contact with ICTs (Kennedy, Wellman, & Klement, 2003), race (Kvasny, 2005) and geographical location (Warren, 2007). ...
This chapter looks at e-petitioning as a successful application of e-participation from a psychological perspective. It notes that e-participation should not be viewed uncritically, as digital technologies cannot remedy all (political) problems: indeed, they can strengthen old ones and create new ones. Following a brief reviews of socio-economic and application-acceptance models of e-participation, a small selection of psychological approaches factors are presented that could be applied to this context. It is argued that it is useful and important to understand the psychological factors that influence the decisions made by individuals about whether to participate in the political system by initiating, or simply signing, a petition, or choose to remain mere passive observers, no matter how well informed. These insights can both help practitioners designing an e-participation system, and designing new research projects.
... But what does HIV have to do with creating an online experience that is as engaging as it is informative? The answer lies in understanding that different socio-ethnic groups perceive and react to online information differ-that in normalizing discourses such as the "digital divide," ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, are presented as being deficient in computer skills and their ability to utilize online resources [3][4][5][6]. Such deficit philosophy models rely on the faulty assumption that information available online is tailored to appeal to all psychological and cultural tastes. ...
Creating a user experience to communicate the seriousness of HIV prevention and awareness can be both educational while entertaining. This combination along with a sense of cultural influence helps to both attract and engage millennials.
... In the Information Systems area, we outline the work of scholars who have extended Giddens' ideas by including an explicit information and communication technology (ICT) dimension in social analysis. Some examples are (a) Walsham (1993), Walsham and Sahay (1999), and Jones, Orlikowski, and Munir (2004); (b) a Foucauldian group of studies that draws on power and knowledge, like Introna (1997) and Zuboff (1988); (c) a group that uses Bourdieu, like Kvasny (2005Kvasny ( , 2006 and Richardson and Howcroft (2006); and (d) researchers that applied actor-network theory from a critical lens, like Doolin and Lowe (2002). We also outline the critical discourse analysis (CDA) stream as a firm illustration of a critical interpretive perspective. ...
Leaving the thesis proposal defense room, the PhD business student had an important assignment to accomplish before being authorized to set a date for defending her thesis: to better justify the validity of her qualitative inquiry framed by a critical interpretive standpoint. Knowing that the generation, analysis, and interpretation of empirical materials are processes always conducted within some understanding of what constitutes legitimate inquiry and valid knowledge, she drew inspiration from ethnographical, confessional, critical, and post-modern work to propose a set of dialogical principles for conducting and evaluating a nonfoundational type of research inquiry. This manuscript revisits this venture a number of years later, reflecting on what has changed and what is still missing. We argue that there is a space and an occasion in the research methods literature for proposing dialogical principles for nonfoundational research, principles that are particularly relevant for qualitative researchers struggling in business schools worldwide.
... There is much enthusiasm that the internet can aid in the reduction of long-standing health inequalities (AHRQ, 2012) and the ability of the "Net" to reach those with stigmatized illnesses or those interested in learning more about stigmatized medical conditions (Berger et al., 2005). Scholars, such as Selwyn (2004), Kvasny (2005), Brock (2007) and Kvasny and Payton (2008) caution that normalizing discourses like the "digital divide" present blacks as being deficient in internet access, computer skills, and in the knowledge of how to access and utilize online information in general. Moreover, these discourses rely on the faulty assumption that the wealth of information available online makes internet usage beneficial for everyone. ...
Purpose
– Two research questions are addressed: what are black female college students’ perceptions of current messages present on web sites about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention?; and what messages do black female college students find culturally relevant to them, and why? Results indicate that these women perceive several communication barriers including lack of trust and unfamiliarity with information sources, stigma ascribed to HIV, as well as misconceptions and traditional values held by some in the black community and health institutions. HIV prevention messages are perceived as relevant if they exhibit qualities including interactive features. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
– To understand black collegiate women as health information seekers, it is important to engage paradigms that allow researchers to make sense of how group members construct their content needs, what helps shape this construction, and the meaning derived from the consumption of the information, focus groups are an effective qualitative method for enabling collective discussion and interaction between research participants that facilitates the exploration of under-researched topics like HIV prevention as well as the language commonly used by respondents to describe HIV from a socio-cultural perspective. The research team conducted three focus groups to appraise current black female college students’ attitudes and perceptions of messages presented on HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness web sites
Findings
– HIV prevention messages are perceived as relevant if they exhibit qualities including interactive features, practical advice using non-technical vocabulary, content authored and disseminated by familiar and trustworthy individuals and institutions, and risk related to individual behaviors rather than the demographic group. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research on the design of health information systems are provided.
Research limitations/implications
– This research is based on a small sample size based on one region of the USA.
Practical implications
– Health communication materials should also provide strategies for dispelling myths, and combating feelings of stigma, and mistrust. In addition, practical advice such as questions to ask physicians may help to produce positive and desirable outcomes as black women seek services from the healthcare system. The message itself must take into account a number of factors include short and simple messages, clean web pages, navigation structures that make information easy to find, comprehensive information all found in a single web site, and interactive features to facilitate discussion and sharing. In particular, with social media, women can also play a role in the creation and dissemination of health messages in multiple modalities including text, spoken word, still and moving images, and music.
Social implications
– “A major component of preventive health practice is the availability and provision of information regarding risks to health and promotional measures for enhancing the health status among this population” (Gollop, 1997, p. 142). However, as Dervin (2005) cautions, while information is necessary, it is insufficient to encourage behavior change. To combat the health disparities that differentially impact African-American women requires expertize and understanding from multiple perspectives. By providing insight into how black collegiate women perceive HIV prevention information needs, the women in the focus groups lend a necessary voice in the effort toward healthy equity through the creation of effective health interventions that will appeal to them.
Originality/value
– The author seeks to create an online and socially connected experience characteristic of ongoing user input and active engagement in content development which targets the population. From a human-computer interaction viewpoint, the authors are seeking to avoid design divorced from context and meaning. In developing such an experience, the authors will need to triangulate the roles of culture, context, and design to reduce the content divide, yet amplify the notion of participatory web. Participatory web embodies a social justice movement to build web content from voices typically dampened in the discourse. It (re)shapes meaning, identity, and ecologies in the process of foci on particular social, health, and political causes (e.g. HIV/AIDS). Giving black women ownership over the creation of health information on the internet may improve the ability to provide targeted HIV prevention content that is culturally salient and more effective in reducing HIV infections in this community.
... Despite this critique, there are a growing number of empirical studies within the field of CISR. Here follows some examples of empirical studies informed by a critical IS research agenda: Kvasny (2002Kvasny ( , 2005Kvasny ( , 2006 has used feminist theory and social stratification perspectives to explore digital divide and black women's discourses about information technology. Theoretical concepts of Bourdieu have been used to explore gender and technology (Adam et al., 2004), the domestication of information technology in households (Richardson, 2006) and cultures of consumption and technology usage in call centers (Richardson and Howcroft, 2006). ...
... Thus, overcoming the digital divide among elders requires more than appropriate design and implementation. It demands deep consideration of the ways in which technology mediates, influences, and is shaped by human relationships (Kvasny, 2005;Loe, 2010). ...
In-home technologies can support older adults' activities of daily living, provide physical safety and security, and connect elders to family and friends. They facilitate aging in place while reducing caregiver burden. One of older adults' primary concerns about in-home technologies is their potential to reduce human contact, particularly from cherished caregivers. In this exploratory in situ study, we provided an ecosystem of networked monitoring technologies to six older adults and their caregivers. We analyzed the amount and content of communication between them. The amount of noncomputer-mediated communication did not decrease through the 6-week study. The content of communication coalesced into four themes: communication about the technologies, communication facilitated by technologies, intrusiveness of technologies, and fun and playfulness with the technologies. Results suggest that in-home technologies, designed with sensitivity to older adults' primary motivations, have the potential to shape and tailor important relationships in later life.
... It is not difficult to find adverse consequences resulting from policies that lack meaningful input from all interested parties. Kvasny (2005) describes how contextually inappropriate efforts undermined technology training for underrepresented populations. Likewise, financial education efforts lack the contextual relevancy for all students, perpetuating a system of wide income disparities between rich and poor. ...
To achieve a fully participatory society, all participants should receive equal opportunities for understanding the processes of acquiring, managing, and developing financial resources. The author argues that financial education processes do not meet the needs of all children, because they do not account for differences in child development prompted by various economic contexts. He contends that these contexts prompt judgment patterns among individuals having economic differences and that efforts toward social equity necessitate the exploration of moral issues related to personal finance. He recommends use of the arts to enable student discovery and reconciliation of financial judgments so that students may construct understandings of the social issues that prompt financial inequities and may explore ideas to challenge them.
... Christensen et al. (2005) examined the developmental patterns of gender differences associated with technology Ching et al. (2005) pointed to concerns over women's computer efficacy. Kvasny (2005) described the challenges of excluding community input from technology enhancement endeavors. Neilson (2005) observed that inattention to user literacy detracts from potential Internet use. ...
The authors recognize that educators must consider the nature and consequences of technology's use in financial education. Pointing out that both technological presence and instructional methodology represent determinants of pedagogical appropriateness, the authors describe a study measuring whether socioeconomic elements influence educators' agreement with technology uses for financial education in grades K-4. While they find that settings (e.g. urban or rural) affect agreement with technology items, they call for further study to refine and clarify the associated relationships.
... In an American context that translates to information devoted to the interests (and fears) of affluent, middle class White men. Women and minorities are constructed as boundaries or objects for this audience (Kvasny 2005;Brock 2007;Lockard 2000;Mitra 1997). As demographics of Web users have changed, the number of Internet properties devoted to the information needs of minority groups has increased as well. ...
This paper focuses on the construction of racial identity online through the mediating influences of popular culture, old media, weblogs, and Internet users. This paper examines the production of race on the Internet by examining the elements that make up the weblog Freakonomics: the topic, the environment, the medium, and the users. Recent cyberculture research has called for Internet studies to integrate critical theories of race and culture into its analyses. The argument, which this paper seeks to extend, is for the increased recognition of the salience of race in understanding Web content and production. In examining the blog's structure, posts, and comments, I applied Omi and Winant's racial formation theory to the cultural representations and structural phenomena articulated with respect to themes of race, racial interactions, media, and geography. Omi and Winant argue that people interpret the meaning of race by framing it in social structures, and that conversely, recognizing the racial dimensions in social structures leads to interpretations of race. Accordingly, this paper examines interpretations of race in The Wire (a critically-acclaimed minority-led television show), the New York Times news website, the Freakonomics blog, and the Web-enabled audience of the three elements. The paper concludes by arguing for more use of critical race and theory in information studies research in order to understand how racial perspectives affect the presentation and interpretation of Internet content.
Digital-inclusion policy in the United States has historically emphasized home broadband access as both its policy priority and goal. Supplying households with broadband access may not do much to improve the ability of individuals to make meaningful use of the Internet, however, since it provides Internet access with little social context beyond the family. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of disposition, habitus, and multiple forms of capital, this paper endeavors to situate Internet use in its broader social context and explores the importance of institutional access, Internet use at work or school, in developing the dispositions and competencies needed to use the Internet in instrumental ways, such as applying for educational programs or communicating with governments. Through descriptive statistics, it identifies which segments of a US city lack institutional access, and, using multivariate analysis, it highlights the role institutional access plays in developing these abilities and its role in further inequality.
In the United States the digital divide entered the public discourse in the mid-1990s. Over the next two decades, a number of national, regional, and local interventions were implemented to bring information and communication technologies (ICT) to populations who would otherwise go lacking in access to these resources. Some argued that these gains in broadening access to ICT suggested a closing of the digital divide and that the United States was now a nation online. However, as access increased, new and evolving divides in the quality of access, the skills to effectively use online resources, and the availability of culturally salient online content emerged. This article discusses these new and evolving divides, and argues for the continued relevance of the digital divide as an issue for policy makers, educators, researchers, and communities.
Digital-inclusion policy in the United States has historically emphasized home broadband access as both its policy priority and goal. Supplying households with broadband access may not do much to improve the ability of individuals to make meaningful use of the Internet, however, since it provides Internet access with little social context beyond the family. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of disposition, habitus, and multiple forms of capital, this paper endeavors to situate Internet use in its broader social context and explores the importance of institutional access, Internet use at work or school, in developing the dispositions and competencies needed to use the Internet in instrumental ways, such as applying for educational programs or communicating with governments. Through descriptive statistics, it identifies which segments of a US city lack institutional access, and, using multivariate analysis, it highlights the role institutional access plays in developing these abilities and its role in further inequality.
This article aims to provide an overview of key themes and emergent issues in critical information systems (IS) research. This includes a diversity of research endeavours that are committed to challenging the current orthodoxy within IS theory and research. Common threads can be found that link critical IS researchers with CMS researchers: this could be expressed as denaturalization, anti-performativity and reflexivity or the role of insight, critique, and transformative redefinition within our research. However, the article differs slightly from the broader constitution of CMS with regard to the author's concern with technology. Critical IS research is opposed to technological determinism and instrumental rationality underlying systems development and seeks to challenge rather than justify technological imperatives as natural and/or unavoidable.
Der Verlust des Arbeitsplatzes bedeutet weit mehr als der Wegfall des geregelten Einkommens. Zwei darüber hinausgehende negative Folgen stellen das erhöhte subjektive Exklusionsempfinden sowie die Verschlechterung der mentalen Gesundheit dar. Um diese beiden Konsequenzen abfedern zu können, sind insbesondere soziale Ressourcen relevant, die als Stress-Puffer fungieren können. Im Zuge des Arbeitsplatzverlustes reduziert sich jedoch der Umfang dieser sozialer Ressourcen, da Betroffene nicht mehr direkt zum Kollegen- und Arbeitsumfeld gehören. Die Nutzung von Web 2.0-Anwendungen, insbesondere Soziale Netzwerkseiten, Foren oder Communities, ermöglichen das Knüpfen und Aufrechterhalten von Kontakten. Sozialen Medien bieten daher zumindest theoretisch ein Potential zur Aktivierung sozialer Ressourcen. Diese können wiederum zur Reduktion der negativen Konsequenzen von Erwerbslosigkeit führen. Das Internetnutzungsverhalten und das beschriebene Potential waren bisher kaum Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Studien. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, diese Lücke mit zu schließen und die Potentiale der Internetnutzung sowie das Nutzungsverhalten zu analysieren.
Im Rahmen eines triangulären Forschungsansatzes werden 2414 standardisierte Telefoninterviews, 28 qualitative Interviews und ergänzende Tagebuchaufzeichnun- gen zur Analyse des Nutzungsverhaltens, der Determinanten und der Auswirkungen der Internetnutzung herangezogen. Auf Basis dieser Daten lassen sich vier verschie- dene Typen des Internetnutzungsverhaltens identifizieren: Nichtnutzer, sporadische, konsumierende sowie vielseitige Nutzer. Diese Nutzungstypen variieren hinsichtlich der Fähigkeiten, materiellen Ausstattung, der Nutzungsmotive sowie der Erfahrun- gen im Umgang mit dem Internet. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit zeigen, dass die aktive Internetnutzung, d.h. die Bereitstellung eigener Inhalte im Internet, sowohl emotionale als auch informationelle Unterstützung positiv beeinflusst. Diese beiden Ausprägungen sozialer Unterstützung im Internet haben jedoch keinen Einfluss auf das subjektive Exklusionsempfinden der Betroffenen. Allerdings wird die Verschlechterung der mentalen Gesundheit in Folge der Erwerbslosigkeit von informationeller Hilfestellung im Internet abgefedert. Zusammenfassend verwei- sen die Ergebnisse darauf, dass das Potential Sozialer Medien im Kontext von Arbeitslosigkeit ausschließlich in der Versorgung mit Informationen besteht.
Based on original data from one-on-one and focus group interviews with high school students in California, this article reveals how consistent access to or deprivation from informational resources influences information synthesis for scholastic work. In order to hold motivation constant, the article delineates three kinds of Striver students: Endowed, Entrepreneurial, and Empowered. The article examines the ways in which Strivers obtain information relevant to schoolwork from digital media, non-digital media, and knowledgeable individuals. Findings reveal linkages between access to informational resources and the internalization of a self-reliant or other-reliant stance towards information synthesis. Endowed-Strivers who enjoy synergistic access to informational resources adopt a self-reliant information habitus. By contrast, Entrepreneurial-Strivers with few home resources engage in linear strategies that facilitate an other-reliant information habitus. The third group, the Empowered-Strivers, benefits from school-based interventions that give them multiple information channels. Such IT interventions can act as substitutes for the rich informational resources enjoyed by Endowed-Strivers at home. Access to IT resources and teacher modeling at school make it possible for Empowered-Strivers to develop a self-reliant information habitus with regard to schoolwork. In showing how a favorable school-based information opportunity structure can compensate for inadequate informational resources at home, the analysis reveals the ways in which informational inequality is both created and sometimes overcome. By illuminating the relationships between access conditions, information opportunity structures, and types of information habitus, the article shows how synergistic use of informational resources plays a critical role in larger digital inequalities.
This article uses key notions of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to analyze the identity of the media professional. Within their post-structural framework, this identity is seen as over-determined, contingent and constructed but at the same time subjected to a hegemonic articulation, based on four nodal points: objectivity, autonomy, management of resources and employee-employer relations. Combined with a theoretical discussion on the (counter-)hegemonic articulations, this allows for the field of discursivity that surrounds the identity of the media professional to be (re)constructed, resulting in four dimensions that offer potential points of identification. This field of discursivity is then used and put to the test as a series of sensitizing concepts for the analysis of the seven phone-in broadcasts the program Ter Zake (on VRT - the North Belgian public broadcasting company) has organized, illustrating both the contingency of the identity of the media professional and the rigidity of the hegemonic articulation.
This article applies Bourdieu's notion of ‘cultural capital’ to historical, documentary research which investigates the construction of a scholastic canon within England's A-level music examinations. A digest of the ways in which this canon evolved between 1951 and 1986 is presented in support of the idea that examiners’ responses to emerging trends in historical musicology were characterised by a high level of caution. An analysis of the examiners’ unreceptive approaches to avant-garde works and to music written by women is employed not only to suggest an underlying conservatism within examiners’ practice, but also to contend that this scholastic canon is part of a cycle of reproduction which serves to exclude certain groups of students from higher education. Effects of this cycle on social mobility are discussed both in relation to the historical period under investigation and in light of contemporary debates about the prescription of canonic works within secondary school curricula. The article's conclusions challenge the ‘disinterestedness’ of prescription within the curriculum and identify important factors which should be among the foremost considerations of those planning national programmes of study, both in music and beyond.
During the 1990's, the digital divide figured prominently in the discourses of academics, corporate leaders, educators and policymakers worldwide. In the US, we witnessed a massive infusion of computers and Internet access into homes, schools, libraries and other neighborhood institutions. This has significantly increased citizens' physical access to information and communication technology (ICT) artifacts and enhanced citizens' opportunities for acquiring and strengthening technical skills. However, does increased physical access and technical skills signal closure of the digital divide? In this paper, I address this question by describing the preconstructed ways in which the digital divide is conceptualized by academics and policymakers, and inferring what these conceptualizations suggest about the existential significance of the digital divide as experienced by historically underserved groups in the U.S.
How does class intersect with claims of digital democracy? Most digital inequality research focuses on digital consumption or participation, but this study uses a production lens to examine who is creating digital content for the public sphere. My results point to a class-based gap among producers of online content. A critical mechanism of this inequality is control of digital tools and an elite Internet-in-practice and information habitus to use the Internet. Using survey data of American adults, I apply a logit analysis of 10 production activities—from Web sites and blogs to discussion forums and social media sites. Even among people who are already online, a digital production gap challenges theories that the Internet creates an egalitarian public sphere. Instead, digital production inequality suggests that elite voices still dominate in the new digital commons.
Abstract This paper reports on findings from the Penceil Project (How People ENCounter E-ILiteracy), part of the ESRC’s e-society programme,. This project explored the experience of non and minimal users of information and communications technologies (ICT) on a social housing estate in south London. Non users of ICT rule out their use becauseit does not make sense in their lives and/or because a potent cocktail of fears and anxieties deters them from trying. There can be no forced answer that everyone must use ICT but much government,and educational policy starts from an unvarying assumption that people must make use of the technology. Mandatory use derives from a techno-rational discourse of ICTs as
Through this literature review, the authors explore financial education’s relevance to urban society. They consider research measuring children’s financial development by observing environmental influences that affect both financial learning and personal judgments. These conditions necessitate financial curricula addressing associated challenges. The authors recommend a cooperative rather than competitive financial education curriculum. Such a framework would employ student-centered instruction to create awareness of the societal consequences for financially based personal judgments related to financial differences.
During the war on drug in the 1980s, state and federal laws sent thousand of street level drug offenders to prison which unwittingly facilitated the spread of HIV/AIDS. Many drug offenders were liable to be infected with HIV from sharing dirty needles. According to Moran, “Prisons are notorious breeding grounds for HIV. Infection rates are five times higher than outside the wall… One study by a national police association found that at least 40% [of incarcerated men] had sex with another man in prison. And despite strong evidence that condoms reduce the spread of AIDS, they are forbidden in all federal and most state and local prisons.” Jim Thomas, professor of public health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill remarks, “To make condoms available in prison would be to admit that sex occurs in prison. And for some reason the prisons don’t want to admit that that happens. But if we want to encourage HIV transmission, this is the perfect policy.” AIDS activists suggest, although HIV/AIDS testing is available, most inmates are not tested because HIV positive inmates can demand costly treatment. Consequently, as Moran notes, “men can leave prison with HIV and never know it. And most men say that when they leave prison they will resume having sex with women.”
Studies of risk perception examine the judgements people make when they are asked to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities
and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and policy-making by providing a basis for understanding and anticipating
public responses to hazards and improving the communication of risk information among lay people, technical experts, and decision-makers.
This work assumes that those who promote and regulate health and safety need to understand how people think about and respond
to risk. Without such understanding, well-intended policies may be ineffective.
Various studies have concluded that news and public affairs programming in the U.S. exhibit biases that derive from the mass media's institutional structures. According to authors such as Ben Bagdikian, Edward Herman, and Noam Chomsky, media content is influenced by institutional factors such as the media's private ownership, its dependency on advertisers, and the industry's concentration. These authors claim that changes in media content depend on changes in media institutions. Such structural modifications would require fundamental changes in the media's organization and ownership.But Herman and Chomsky have also alluded to a different, and decidedly more modest, program of change. Alternative media institutions exist, most notably community radio and television in cities and towns throughout the U.S., and they could provide more independent programming than they currently do. Herman and Chomsky make this point when they say that: “Local nonprofit radio and television stations ... provide an opportunity for direct media access that has been underutilized in the United States.” This suggests that by reducing underutilization, that is, by making more effective use of existing alternative media institutions, greater programming diversity is possible. Although this would produce much less than a wholesale restructuring of media institutions, a greater use of alternative media could promote more independent programming.
We investigated differences in Internet use between whites and African Americans in the United States. Although African Americans
are online in impressive numbers, significant disparities in access indicate the presence of a racial divide on the Internet.
Our findings have important implications for public policy seeking to ensure Internet access for all members of our society.
Risks tend to be judged lower by men than by women and by white people than by people of colour. Prior research by Flynn, Slovic and Mertz [Risk Analysis, 14, pp. 1101-1108] found that these race and gender differences in risk perception in the United States were primarily due to 30% of the white male population who judge risks to be extremely low. The specificity of this finding suggests an explanation in terms of sociopolitical factors rather than biological factors. The study reported here presents new data from a recent national survey conducted in the United States. Although white males again stood apart with respect to their judgements of risk and their attitudes concerning worldviews, trust, and risk-related stigma, the results showed that the distinction between white males and others is more complex than originally thought. Further investigation of sociopolitical factors in risk judgements is recommended to clarify gender and racial differences.
It is our contention that information technology is a cultural commodity whose influence is spread through econo- mic and political action of institutions such as the government and corporations. Informed by Bourdieu's sociology of lan- guage, we conduct a content analysis of political speeches regarding "digital opportunities" delivered by U. S. govern- ment officials. In this analysis we demonstrate how institutions actively (re)produce and legitimize popular representations of technology and its role in the new economy. The broader implication of this analysis is to offer a way in which informa- tion systems research can consider the larger socio-political context in which so many of our research activities and debates are situated.
As a full expression of techne, the information society has already posed fundamental ethical problems, whose complexity and global dimensions are rapidly evolving. What is the best strategy to construct an information society that is ethically sound? This is the question I discuss in this paper. The task is to formulate an information ethics that can treat the world of data, information, knowledge and communication as a new environment, the infosphere. This information ethics must be able to address and solve the ethical challenges arising in the new environment on the basis of the fundamental principles of respect for information, its conservation and valorisation. It must be an ecological ethics for the information environment.
In this paper we report the results of additional exchange ultimatum game experiments conducted at the same time as the exchange ultimatum game experiments reported in Hoffman et al. (Games and Economic Behavior, 7(3), pp. 346–380, 1994). In these additional experiments, we use instructions to change an impersonal exchange situation to a personal exchange situation. To do this, we prompt sellers to consider what choices their buyers will make. Game theory would predict that thinking about the situation would lead sellers to make smaller offers to buyers. In contrast, we find a significant increase in seller offers to buyers. This result suggests that encouraging sellers to thinking about buyer choices focuses their attention on the strategic interaction with humans who think they way they do in personal exchange situations, and who may punish them for unacceptable behavior, and not on the logic of the game theoretic structure of the problem. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
In recent years, there has been growing interest in qualitative research methods and their application to information systems. This paper discusses the nature and applicability of one qualitative approach to information systems research, called critical ethnography. Critical ethnography, informed by critical hermeneutics, is one of many possible approaches to ethnographic research. A critical ethnographic study of the development of an information system in mental health is reviewed.
The author suggests that if researchers in the field of new institutional analysis of organizations wish to address man in real life as an actor, then a focus on the methodology of the approach is necessary. Being historically bounded, the methodology faces two major obstacles when attempting to address man: how it operates within the concept of time and, closely related thereto, how it only addresses man's practice post hoc. This article suggests a methodology based on the poststructural conceptualization of practice.
Nationally, educational institutions are responding to changes in the postindustrial economy by emphasizing the preparation of students to enter more highly technical jobs. Schools and colleges look toward strengthening their graduates by tying classroom work more closely with the skills students need to be successful in the workplace, by emphasizing workplace values, and by teaching on-the-job behaviors that employers find desirable. In this study, a group of rural African American women entered a community college work program to seek the skills they needed to escape the welfare rolls and to prepare themselves for jobs in their community. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "habitus " was used to help explain the contradictions and complexities in the daily lives of these women as they struggled to overcome their difficult situations and faced decisions about their futures in a rural community offering few options for long-term employment.
Research consistently indicates that Latinos and African-Americans are less likely to own and use computers than either Caucasians or Asians. While conventional wisdom holds that high computer costs and lack of access are the primary reasons for this discrepancy, my ethnographic research with 100 low-income adults reveals three non-cost-related psychosocial obstacles that significantly undermine motivation for acquiring computer skills: "relevance," "fear," and "self-concept." My research thus suggests that a more complex relationship exists between ethnicity, identity, and attitudes associated with computers than previously examined; this relationship may better explain why some people are choosing not to use computers at this time. My research also indicates that while community technology centers (CTCs) play an important role in helping adults overcome their resistances and achieve computer literacy, they are presently an underutilized resource--less than 5% of San Diegans use them to meet their computing needs. Hence, my research also questions why more residents do not avail themselves of these community resources. I conclude that efforts to increase computer literacy in underserved communities must go beyond physical access and connectivity and consider the role of cultural factors.
If social work researchers are to accurately describe the psychosocial functioning of clients who experience negative events, they need to consider positive as well as negative outcomes. Here, new measures of self-reported positive life changes after traumatic stressors are introduced. 416 adults (mean age 40.79 yrs) served as subjects. Factor analyses suggest that the Perceived Benefit Scales consist of eight subscales: lifestyle changes; material gain; and increases in self efficacy, family closeness, community closeness, faith in people, compassion, and spirituality. Internal consistency and test–retest coefficients range from adequate to excellent. The scales correlate with indicators of severity and differ by type of negative event experienced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Internet dropouts are overlooked in discussions about cyberspace, yet their numbers approach those of Internet users. Our national surveys of Americans in 1995 and 1996, found that dropouts were younger, poorer, and less well educated than were users. Teenage users of the Internet appear especially likely to dropout, yet surprisingly in light of feminist literature on the subject, females are not any more prone to dropout than males. Initial commitment and motive, as well as sunk costs, seem to be important factors affecting perseverance in the face of the Internet’s technical, procedural and substantive frustrations.
Enthusiasm for the anticipated social dividends of the Internet appears boundless. Indeed, the Internet is expected to do no less than virtually transform society. Yet even as the Internet races ambitiously toward critical mass, some social scientists are beginning to examine carefully the policy implications of current demographic patterns of Internet access and usage. Key demographic variables like income and education drive the policy questions surrounding the Internet because they are the most likely have a differential impact on the consequences of interactive electronic media for different segments in our society. Given these concerns, we set out to conduct a systematic investigation of the differences between whites and African Americans in the United States with respect to computer access, the primary current prerequisite for Internet access, and Web use. We wished to examine whether observed race differences in access and use can be accounted for by differences in income and education, how access influences use, and when race matters in the calculus of equal access. The particular emphasis of this research is on how such differences may be changing over time. We believe our results may be used as a window through which policymakers might view the job of ensuring access to the Internet for the next generation.
A concept of the user is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development, and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence the selection of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that people make. In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic user concept are limited. In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this user concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize the user as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily users of ICTs. Most people who use ICT applications utilize multiple applications, in various roles, and as part of their efforts to produce goods and services while interacting with a variety of other people, and often in multiple social contexts. Moreover, the socially thin user construct limits our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication, and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from the user concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting, and using information systems.
Research consistently indicates that Latinos and African-Americans are less likely to own and use computers than either Caucasians or Asians. While conventional wisdom holds that high computer costs and lack of access are the primary reasons for this discrepancy, my ethnographic research with 100 low-income adults reveals three non-cost-related psychosocial obstacles that significantly undermine motivation for acquiring computer skills: "relevance," "fear," and "self-concept." My research thus suggests that a more complex relationship exists between ethnicity, identity, and attitudes associated with computers than previously examined; this relationship may better explain why some people are choosing not to use computers at this time. My research also indicates that while community technology centers (CTCs) play an important role in helping adults overcome their resistances and achieve computer literacy, they are presently an underutilized resource--less than 5% of San Diegans use them to meet their computing needs. Hence, my research also questions why more residents do not avail themselves of these community resources. I conclude that efforts to increase computer literacy in underserved communities must go beyond physical access and connectivity and consider the role of cultural factors.
This article examines the nature of the gap in household telephone penetration among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. By analyzing historic and current penetration levels of the radio, television, and telephone, it suggests that most information technology gaps are amalgamations of smaller socioeconomic trends and can be discerned and reduced only with careful historical analysis of both technology choices and living patterns. It proposes localized universal service strategies, since the penetration gaps are affected by a complex array of factors more particular to localities than to the country as a whole and as such must be investigated with rigor and caution if progress toward the elimination of penetration gaps is to occur.
Community informatics can be defined as a strategy or discipline that focuses on the use of information and communication technologies by territorial communities. This paper analyzes the emerging community informatics evaluation literature to develop an understanding of the indicators used to gauge project impacts in community networks and community technology centers. This study finds that community networks and community technology center assessments fall into five key areas: strong democracy; social capital; individual empowerment; sense of community; and economic development opportunities. The paper concludes by making recommendations for future community informatics evaluations.
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Bush administration, FCC Policies Ignore, Deepen Digital Divide
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