Social Media Assignment 2) Review on 'Internet Diffusion and The Digital Divide: The Role of Policy-Making and Political Institutions' by Kenneth S. Rogerson and Daniel Milton

This chapter on ‘Internet diffusion and the digital divide’ explains the situation in several countries regarding their intention to develop technological infrastructure as well as creating new internet policies in their countries. The authors use several case studies from Estonia, Brazil, Singapore and the United States. These countries from different regions and different socioeconomic status represent a good comparison to one another given that they share very little similarities but at the same time one of their pursuits is very similar.
The internet has been considered a key aspect of social media and this set of countries has applied policies to expand its influence. In Brazil president Lula wanted to create a highly influential technological community in which software and internet was available for the masses, creating a developing unity among people and pushing society to have a minimum of 15% of the population with internet access, which supports the idea that “the higher the educational background the more people use the internet in an instrumental way” (Milton) which was part of Brazil’s “Computers for all” program. Estonia was also a role model using the internet, being in 2007 the only country that applied governmental voting through the internet, perhaps because it used to be the Cybernetics central of the Soviet Union (Milton) Nevertheless their objectives are clear and their intentions were to provide a fair digital divide across the nation, allowing in 2007 95% of the population to have access to the Internet.
Singapore had a much stricter domestic policy with the internet, they also shared an electronic pursuit hoping that in the 90s their ‘paperless’ campaign would impulse the country to share information through electronic channels however, information that they wished to control with their Computer Misuse Act they hoped to filter content to the public and in 2006 with their Cyber-watch they hoped to protect classified governmental information. In comparison to Brazil and Estonia, Singapore was more conservative and slightly more authoritarian, but nonetheless they sought to expand the influence of the Internet at home.
The United States showed a balance between Singapore, Brazil and Estonia. During the late 90s President Bill Clinton encouraged government funding for the Community Technology Centre, developing infrastructure and technological advances (Milton). On the other hand, with the new developments in the industry they also sought to protect public interest. With the Telecommunications Act in 1996 Congress wished to have a stricter policy filtering content which was later decided to be unconstitutional, which in 1997 later transformed into the Children Privacy Protection law which allowed parents to have more control and the information of certain webpages was filtered to protect minors.
Ultimately this chapter shows the importance of governmental intervention when it comes to the development of technology and infrastructure. With the support and funding of the public sector Internet can reach a much wider audience and provide information that is regulated protecting the public, which is an example of what Rogerson and Milton said at the beginning of the chapter “with economic development comes better access to internet and narrower socioeconomic differences between the media users.” (Milton)

Social Media Assignment - 1) Review on 'New Media & Society - ICT as cultural capital: The relationship between socioeconomic status and the computer-use profile of young people'

This article from the Flanders/Ghent University of Belgium shows a very interesting and straight forward experiment which wishes to understand the relationship with socioeconomic status and the computer use of young people; its priority was to find out “whether varying patterns of computer access, attitudes, competencies and uses can be seen as constituting differences in cultural capital” (Tondeur, 2010). The report raised awareness that there is an intrigue to define ICT and its role in new media within society “looking, therefore, for contemporary suppliers of relevant competencies and skills, ICT becomes paramount.” (Tondeur, 2010)

The study surveyed over 1000 students from over 40 different schools around Belgium. There were several questions asked to determine how experienced they were in ICT skills and they were asked several possible scenarios in which they would require certain ICT skills and the students would answer how skilled they thought they were.

The results however were slightly pessimistic since they did not prove that there was any sign of social economic status and computer ownership among the students they have interviewed “what emerged from the analyses was that no relationship between SES and computer ownership was found for this group of students.” (Tondeur, 2010)
Nevertheless this was corroborated by previous research, suggesting that access to computers is no longer a unitary phenomenon and it can only slightly support the idea of treating the computer-use profile as a contemporary indicator of differing cultural capital.” (Tondeur, 2010)

My suggestion to the report is that perhaps the students from a lower socioeconomic status could have lied in the surveys pretending to have a better notion of ICT skills than the reports state in order to not feel humiliated or undermined by their classmates. This could be considered a rather sceptical idea but it might suggest a reason as to why the SES did not affect the ICT skills. Another point of view is that the socioeconomic status in Flanders, Belgium does not differ greatly from one student to another and therefore will not provide significant evidence, if perhaps students are compared from different parts of Belgium or even a zone in Europe various socioeconomic statuses will be revealed, thus allowing the research to be more thorough.

Lastly, ICT skills perhaps can’t consider a different socioeconomic status but they might reveal the differences through other methods, such as the content behind the purpose of using computers. It is true that there is only a slight difference between lower, middle and upper class when it comes to the computer skills but different uses the students have with those skills might determine their SES for instance a student that uses the computer to use his school work and another one only uses it for instant messaging and chat might prove one to be from a higher socioeconomic status than the other.


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