With new media come new challenges. In just under two decades, the media landscape has expanded from a world with no Internet and limited media choices, to a world in which the Internet has come to dominate our time with media. The Internet has revolutionized how we search for information, learn about world events, entertain ourselves, and connect with others. Clearly, the Internet has delivered on the promise of bringing the world into our homes.
However, the world that most of us enjoy – a world in which information of all kinds is available at our fingertips – is not the world we all live in. In the United States alone, 21% of the population lacks regular Internet access at home or work. And of those who do have regular access, most do not full understand the messages being delivered. Therefore, people without regular Internet access have a different, perhaps more limited and distorted view of the world.
This concept is known as the digital divide – the inequality that occurs between those who have access to the Internet and who can think critically about its messages, and those who cannot. This disparity has an effect on every aspect of people’s lives – income level, upward mobility, job prospects, relationships, political power, race relations and equality, lifespan, and status in society, just to name a few.
Below are some resources for those researching the digital divide and its effects.
http://www.slideshare.net/newdigitaldivide/the-new-digital-divide-2707247
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/1017/1/MEDIALITERACY.pdf
http://www.understandmedia.com/journals-a-publications/44-scholarly-articles/141-the-ubiquity-myth
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2768/1/Gradations_in_digital_inclusion_(LSERO).pdf
