Sharon Strover

Remapping the Digital Divide

A phrase with great urgency a few years ago, “the digital divide” now is on the sidelines. As the federal government renewed its commitment to marketplace solutions in telecommunications and information technology issues under the Bush administration, the idea of a digital divide faced criticism from FCC Chairman Powell for being an ill-advised version of the “Mercedes divide” in the United States: Some people can afford expensive luxury cars, others cannot, but that is the American way. The notion of a severe divide also was challenged by an array of studies documenting the rising pace of computer and Internet use and connectivity: The statistics seem to be moving in the right direction, so why worry? Numerous programs founded in the late 1990s by the federal government (NTIA’s Technology Opportunity Program, the Department of Education’s Community Technology Centers programs, Housing and Urban Development’s Neighborhood Networks Program) have been slashed. They were intended to aid technology deployment to disadvantaged populations or remote regions and to spread the reach of the Internet to more publicly available locations in order to serve people who do not have home equipment of their own, or who could not afford an Internet connection. The phrase “digital opportunity” replaced the divide, putting a blandly positive spin on all things computer related. As the very idea of inequity is eliminated from the social policy vocabulary in favor of marketplace reasoning, the concept of a divide being played out on the latest technology front may slip away from public scrutiny. This issue of The Information Society is an effort to reassert some of the new definitions of the digital divide, and to explore its shape and operations in more nuanced ways. The brief history of the digital divide illustrates symbolic, practical, and opportunistic responses to the confusing prospect presented by mass use of computers and the Internet. The confusion relies on the ready acceptance that the computer is the gateway to membership in the Information Society and the workforce of the future, and that it also renders society more democratic, even in the face of no substantial change to our existing social structure attributable to computerization. One broadband proponent

The prospects for broadband deployment in rural America

Abstract A great deal of policy attention over the past two years has been directed at insuring that more communities within the country have access to high speed or “broadband” connections. The 1996 Telecommunications Act promises through its universal service provisions that telecommunications services will be roughly comparable across urban and rural areas, but the rapid development of new Internet-based services and the networks on which they depend illustrates huge discrepancies in broadband availability. This paper analyzes some of the programs and policies that claim to address this network divide, using existing data to comment on their efficacy. These analyses suggest that the prospects for near-term broadband services in rural region are dim, and that the existing policy approaches appear insufficient to achieve the goal of widespread rural deployment.

How much does broadband infrastructure matter? Decomposing the metro–non-metro adoption gap with the help of the National Broadband Map

Abstract Although overall residential broadband adoption rates have increased dramatically over the past decade, the metropolitan–non-metropolitan gap has been consistent at 12–13 percentage points. Policy prescriptions to address this problem have focused on either increasing broadband supply (typically via funding for infrastructure) or demand (such as educational efforts about why broadband is useful) in rural areas. However, the appropriate programmatic mix remains an open question, since little empirical analysis has actually assessed the degree to which a lack of infrastructure is responsible for this ‘digital divide.’ In this article, information on broadband adoption from 2011 Current Population Survey data are meshed with detailed broadband infrastructure data from the newly available National Broadband Map. A non-linear decomposition technique is used to demonstrate that existing metro–non-metro differences in infrastructure availability comprised approximately 38% of the 2011 broadband adoption gap. This same technique also shows that 52% of the gap is due to differences in characteristics such as education and income, suggesting that future policies and programs addressing this issue should include a heavily-weighted demand component.

Open government data intermediaries: a terminology framework

The use of public sector data, in an open and machine readable format, is said to contribute not only to public accountability but also to economic growth. In particular, the potential for open government data to generate data-driven entrepreneurship and scientific discovery has been the focus of much attention by both scholars and policy makers. In this article, we analyze the current perspectives on open government data intermediaries. Since it is a very recent phenomenon, the terminology used in this field is not clear, often leading to different terms being confused or used interchangeably. The framework proposed here is meant as an aid in the development of a coherent terminology for describing, comparing and discussing different approaches to these services.

Broadband Redux: 2013

Abstract As the first major federal intervention in improving high speed access to a resource increasingly identified as necessary to contemporary life, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) funds devoted to broadband represented a new chapter in building infrastructure in the country and in moving toward a next generation of network connectivity. Though intended to understand what the stimulus funding accomplished as part of this special issue, we realized that it would take several more years to complete the funded projects and to assess their impacts. This special issue explores aspects of the ARRA investments in broadband, and offers some comparisons with earlier assessments collected in special issues in Government Information Quarterly (GIQ, 2003; 2006).

Outside looking in: shaping access and use of PCCs

We examine factors that mediate the access and use of public computing centers (PCCs) that are part of a United States government policy initiative to bridge the digital divide. Drawing on in-depth interviews and field observations conducted in the state of Texas, we interrogate how the social settings in which the sites are embedded, influence the way marginalized users approach and use the Internet resources inside the PCCs. Through our analysis, we demonstrate that access and use of PCCs is mediated by factors beyond the mere availability of computing infrastructure and include conditions such as fulfillment of routine life needs, geo-spatial characteristics of sites, availability of transport, and access to alternative sites of Internet access.

America’s battle for media democracy: The triumph of corporate libertarianism and the future of media reform, by Victor Pickard

would have enabled better understanding about the varieties of fandom even within the same musical genre in the face of monolithic studies. The strength of the collection is that it includes work from a range of disciplines, bringing together media studies perspectives (like Bennett’s on celebrity) and sociological perspectives (like Sinclair and Hagen’s use of subcultural theory). There is also a good mix of fandom sites (e.g., music, sports, television) and global and digital locales, as well as mixture of theoretical and empirically based chapters, only some of which I have considered here. By far for me, the first part on thinking through definitions of fandom was most beneficial. The main weakness of the book is the variation in quality so that brilliant, groundbreaking chapters like Sandvoss and Kearns’ sit alongside underdeveloped chapters like that by the Janissary Collective. Nevertheless, this is a good overview of current research in fandom and those new to the field will find evidence of its health. There is a sense of the field’s history, its crucial questions, its range of disciplinary perspectives, and fandom sites: it makes a useful addition to fan studies.

Guest Editorial: Immersive Media Experiences

Multimedia content has the potential for significant impact on users’ emotions, their sense of presence and engagement experiencing the service, application or information being provided, in immersive environments. The evolution of technology, user expectations and results from research activities have led to an enormous increase in the amount of content delivered in different formats, via a number of heterogeneous communication networks, to a range of devices, many of them portable and offering tremendous opportunities for immersion, user participation and personalization. New paradigms for media production, distribution and consumption have been emerging, introducing different sensory modalities and audio-visual surround effects, for an increased sense of presence, and also enabling participation and social interaction in the media chain, thus increasing the sense of belonging and contributing to the success of the services being provided. Multimed Tools Appl (2016) 75:12285–12290 DOI 10.1007/s11042-016-3803-6

A Review of: “Addressing the World: National Identity and Internet Country Code Domains”

This 2003 volume explores a concern that has possibly never occurred to most Americans: the significance of ones own country code within a domain name. Americans have been privileged in their enjo...

Citizens’ Perspectives on E-government

This article presents the results of a survey conducted in the state of Texas to the assess issues and concerns citizens have in having government provide services over the Internet. The survey presents one vision of what people believe about network-mediated government services and how they interact with them, and it contributes ideas about the sorts of policies and considerations our government agencies might adopt as they move toward a fully realized e-government