Digital Divide

The most pressing social problem of the Information Age is the �digital divide’. Explain what this divide is and its causes. Propose measures aimed at redressing this problem.

Introduction

Media is one of the common mediums ways where people can get the information; media is basically used in people’s everyday life. As the world changes into a modern ways, the media also developed into some higher technological system. The coming out of the new information and communications systems are the creation of having the �information society’ (Loader 1998:3). Therefore, the information technology has brought the fundamental changes throughout the society. The technological change has shifted the industrial and age into a network age. Then it has affected the existing social construction and it responses and patterns the social inequality (Servon 2002). The access of the media information technology and the digital divide will be examined in this following essay; it will be analysed from the measures and factors which are related to digital divide, as well as the measures depiction of redressing the problem.

Discussions

Information Age and New Media

In these days, old media changes its time into a new transition of a new media, which is the media environment, and this industries are being transformed by powerful technological, economic, as well as the social forces. The media development has been developed for years; however, the continuous development of technology where it can enlarge and expand the power and control the information to individual users and groups.

The old media such as television, radio, print media, others where these are the common mediums for gaining information accessible for many people’ however, the media systems continually increase and develop with these developments such as the internet, and digital technology in new media is evolving. According to Kuttan & Peters (2003:4), the increasing changes of technology have strong relationships to the social, political, as well as in the academic circles. The relationship is clearly seen as those people who have better access to technology are likely to have more prepared in thriving the new technology; this is known as the Information Age.

Digital Divide

Defining Digital Divide

Digital divide is defined as the separation of those people and communities who have the access to the information technology and those people who do not. So, it is where there is a gap between those two divisions (Kuttan & Peters 2003). As cited in Kuttan & Peters (2003:3), President George W. Bush stated that the digital divide is also known as the digital opportunity as he perceives that this problem creates an �achievement gap’. It is also illustrated that the minute that the technology is innovated and comes to the market, it creates more divide unless every part of society is all distributed by those new innovation.

For those society who have difficulty to get access to technology, which is also known as the �have-nots’ are more likely to left behind with those with access, which is known as the �haves’; this situation structures the �information underclass’ (Kuttan & Peters 2003:4). Stated by Evans (2004:11), �In this world, which is ordered according to who has information and who is able to use it to effect change’. The information and the technology changes are perceived as the �social levellers’.

History of Digital Divide

The digital divide has been existed since long time ago, but the term of вЂ?digital divide’ was discovered by the US government in 1995. The National Telecommunication and Information Administration (NTIA) had a report titled “The Falling through the Net” which showed the data of numbers of people in America who have access to the information technology, and those who do not (Servon 2002:2). Kuttan & Peters (2003:4) stated that the report showed that there has been a big gap which is created by those people who live with a more educated, higher income, and live in urban areas, with those who have less educated and lower income.

Digital Divide as a Crisis

There has been a debate from the actual importance of the digital divide. The controversies have arisen in debating that digital divide is a reasonable crisis or it is just the problem which has been exaggerated by the media society (Kuttan and Peters 2003:8).

As it has been illustrated earlier, the gap and the separation between the �info rich’ and �info poor’ have been existed for years where the staggering statistic support the argument. �In the same vein, the digital divide has been called as one of the most important civil rights issues facing our modern Information society’ (Kuttan and Peters 2003:8). This problem really exists as this digital divides has been considered in creating the cyberghetto and cybertopia.

Opposed to that, digital divide has been considered as exaggerating, as in fact it is a distant from crisis. As it is stated by Kuttan and Peters (2003:9), �After all, they say, most people only use computers and in the Internet for entertainment and convenience and those without this technology are facing an imperilled future’. In this case, it explains that digital divide is not measured as a crisis because it is just about the economic factor which creates the gap for people to have an access to information technology (Kuttan and Peters 2003:9).

Even though there have been arguments which support that digital divide as a hype, digital divide still acts in reclassifying the society into the new structure of social group (Ebo 1998:2). Thus, the digital divide gives the uneven access to the new information technology, and it gives a significant portion of the population who may get left behind either in social, economical, and perhaps political perspective. The divide is created not because they have the lack of interest in the internet; other than they do not have the appropriate skills, information processing ability to get the information. This issue will be explained in this essay as the dimensions of digital divide.

The digital divide generated the economic problem for those people who are counted as the minority groups; it is because the information technology which is increasingly