Bridge The Gap

The digital divide is a big issue our generation is facing.

According to Nick Couldry, the digital divide is “a widely used label for a range of policy debates since the mid 1990’s about the spread of access to the internet and other forms of ‘digital’ media.”

Pippa Norris, a political scientist has categorized it into the ‘global divide’ and the ‘social divide’. The global divide according to Norris is concerned with the large differences between different countries telecommunications infrastructures, number of computers, website hosts, etc. The social divide concerned with one nation and the gap between those who have access to that societies web resources and those who don’t.

On Live Trading News, an article was recently published on bridging the digital divide in Asia.

http://www.livetradingnews.com/the-digital-divide-in-asia-43022.htm

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon is working on bridging the gap that separates the rich from the poor depending on their access to modern telecommunications. “Let us promote multiple languages in new media, and let us ensure free access to the Internet and social media tools everywhere” said Ban Ki-moon.

Problem is, they have been working on this goal for over a decade now.  In the class readings Couldry wrote that the global inequalities in information resources made the vision for bridging the social gap difficult. This proved to be true for Asia.

In July 2000 the G8 Summit was in Okinawa, Japan. They set up a task force to see what could be done about the digital divide. This force was called the ‘Digital Opportunity Force,’ and the talk about the digital divide only decreased after the force was created.

Now, 11 years later, the 8^th Asian Media Summit has occurred and the digital divide is now a stronger issue than ever. The news article says that “Ministers, General Directors, policy makers, leading experts and scholars in the fields of broadcasting and press took part in the 2-day summit, under the topic “Broadcasting in the Digital Era,”

In class and from our Web Studies book we learn that the United States politically is ignoring the digital divide and pushing it to the side. This is an issue because the digital divide cannot continue being put off center stage.

Computers, websites, media and the internet together have led to the development of many ideas and innovations that would not have been imagined without access to internet and information transmitters.

In Asia the digital divide is quickly becoming more of a prominent issue to focus on, let’s hope it continues strong in that direction and the United States can take a hint.