Cultural differentiation or social segregation? Four approaches to the digital divide

Abstract

This article analyses some of the contradictions of contemporary technological society through the term ‘digital divide’ and the societal consequences predicted by this development. It briefly examines the history of communication technology in the 1970s, when a lively debate about the new information and communication order and the unbalanced diffusion of mass media took place. The many views on the ‘digital divide’ are presented here as four distinct approaches differing from each other in context and definition: the technocratic approach; the social structure approach; the information structure and exclusion approach; and modernization and capitalism. The main characteristics of these discourses are explained and evaluated. The role of the information technologies in contemporary societies is briefly discussed and a tentative conclusion drawn on the issue of cultural differentiation as against social segregation in a context of a technologically advanced Nordic country. In conclusion, a few ideas concerning the adoption and use of the internet in a given locality are given.