Understanding information inequality: Making sense of the literature of the information and digital divides

2006/12/01 by Liangzhi Yu · 5 citations
Engineering · Social Sciences · #E-Government and Public Services #ICT Impact and Policies #Social Media and Politics

paper · doi:10.1177/0961000606070600

openalex publication_date 2006/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

This paper reviews related research since the early 1990s on the information and digital divides. It shows that, despite their shared concerns with illustrating social inequality through the lens of information resource distribution, the two areas in effect represent two overlapping research communities. The research focus and discourse of the former were primarily shaped by three different theoretical perspectives and were inspired by a fairly strong sense of ethical principles; those of the latter, on the other hand, were shaped primarily by four different political standpoints and were imbued with a fairly strong concern for political and economical interests. The co-existence of multifarious perspectives and standpoints has produced divergent, and sometimes contradictory, research findings and policy recommendations, which inevitably perplex researchers and policy makers. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and policy making.

Citations

• Exploring the Digital Divide
• The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon
• Digital divide in a developing country
• The Knowledge Gap

Cited by

• Moving on up in the information society? A longitudinal analysis of the relationship between Internet use and social class mobility in Britain
• Re‐situating information poverty: Information marginalization and parents of individuals with disabilities
• Small‐scale fishing community's information needs and access in Bangladesh: An information ecosystem perspective
• Content Growth and Attention Contagion in Information Networks: Addressing Information Poverty on Wikipedia
• Exploring direct and indirect predictors of heart disease information seeking

Related

• The Digital Divide: what does it mean to be information-poor?
• The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon
• The Paradox of Information Access: Growing Isolation in the Age of Sharing
• Information Societies and Digital Divides
• The Social Relativity of Digital Exclusion: Applying Relative Deprivation Theory to Digital Inequalities