Book Review: The Digital Divide

Perhaps because by the 2010s four in five people were using the Internet in many regions of the world, the digital divide appeared fixed. This book, however, is a reminder of the continued social relevance of inequalities in access to, use of, and outcomes of digital information and communication technologies – ‘the problem only starts when everybody has a computer, smartphone or Internet connection!’ (p. 47, emphasis in original). The Digital Divide is next in line in a series of impactful book-length treatments of the subject by Pippa Norris (2001), Mark Warschauer (2003), Jan Van Dijk (2005), and James Witte and Susan Mannon (2010). Van Dijk’s overarching, empirically well-founded diagnosis is that the digital divide reflects and often reinforces social inequality.