Digital Divide - Approaches

Approaches

Conceptualization of the digital divide is often as follows:

1. Theoretical explanations for the digital divide, or who connects with which attributes: demographic characteristics of connected individuals and their cohorts.
2. Means of connectivity, or how individuals and their cohorts are connecting and to what: infrastructure, location, and network availability.
3. Intensity of connectivity, or how sophisticated the usage: mere access, retrieval, interactivity, innovative contributions.
4. Purpose of connectivity, or why individuals and their cohorts are connecting: reasons individuals are online and uses of the Internet and ICTs.
5. Lack of connectivity, or why individuals and their cohorts are not connecting.

In coveted research, while each explanation is examined, the others should be controlled for in order to eliminate interaction effects or mediating variables, but these explanations are meant to stand as general trends, not direct causes. Each of the above listed items can be looked at from different angles, which leads to a myriad of ways to look at (or define) the digital divide. For example, measurements for the intensity of usage, such as incidence and frequency, vary by study. Some report usage as access to Internet and ICTs while others report usage as having previously connected to the Internet. Some studies focus on specific technologies, others on a combination (such as Infostate, proposed by Orbicom-UNESCO, the Digital Opportunity Index, or ITU's ICT Development Index). Based on these differences, there are hundreds of alternatives ways to define the digital divide.