Accepted Papers |
back to list of accepted papers Negotiating the digital divide: narratives from the haves and the have-notsDebbie Holley & Martin Oliver download full paper in PDF format The digital divide exists. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) refer to the divide as the gaps in access to information and communication technology, which, “to some extent is simply a deepening of existing forms of exclusion” (OECD 2002:11). Thus, arguably the divide is of concern to government policymakers, as without policy interventions, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will intensify societal divisions, and thus increasingly marginalize those who are, “unemployed, poor, housebound, disabled, less educated, members of ethnic and cultural minorities - and in many countries, women” (OECD op.cit); this politicises access to technologies. In the USA, similarly, there is concern over access to ICT. The US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Strategy (NITA) commissioned the first of three reports back in July 1995 (Carvin 2000) to identify categories of online access throughout the USA and concluded in the final report in 1999 that access had soared for people in all demographic groups and geographic locations. However, the digital divide between the information rich and information poor had, according to final report, not only persisted but widened. The power of new technologies as an agent for economic and political change has consequences in both political actions and discourse (Loader 1998). Concern at the international level is mirrored nationally. The UK Government produced the ’Harnessing Technology’ (2005) document, which outlined the relevance and strategic importance of ICT to the so called ‘UK PLC’ and emphasised the importance of a knowledge society in fuelling economic prosperity. Government policy, and e-learning policy, has a pervasive impact on all levels of education and it is therefore an issue of concern as to how these polices will affect those within Higher Education. Technologies are not value-neutral, and can only be understood when placed “within a wider political context of an unequal and changing pattern of power relationships” (Loader, 1998:7). An issue in the digital divide, then, is how these power relationships play out within the educational system. Are the inequalities of society replicated in the classrooms of our Universities? This paper seeks a richer understanding of the digital divide from the student perspective, and the tradition we will frame the work in is within the phenomenological approach, where the meaning of the lived experiences for individuals about a concept or the phenomenon is explored (Cresswell 1998:51). The method used is that of Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM), which draws upon the German school of thought from the early 20th century and used particularly to draw out the “stories” or narratives from interviewee’s lives (Wengraf 2001). What is of interest to the researcher is what the interviewee selects to tell us, and the way in which the story is told. The interview is structured such that the interviewee has the time and space to develop their own narrative contribution. Thus, the Biographic Narrative Interpretative method (BNIM) method starts from a ‘deliberately narrow position’ that interview data are only about a particular research conversation that occurred at a particular time and place. The BNIM method has a key advantage for interviewing participants known to the interviewer, as it can, in part, address issues of power relationships established through previous contact (e.g. as teacher and student). The approach rests upon the capacity for dialogue and shared insight, what West (1996:19) considers to be “strangled in its infancy” by the use of objectivist, detached methods, which can “alienate, disempower and silence people, thus impoverishing their narrative contribution and the understandings they could bring” (West, op.cit). For this particular study, we selected students at opposing sides of the digital divide, i.e. a ‘have’ and a ‘have not’. This paper will draw upon the experiences of Charles and Kwame (pseudonyms) who narrated how they started to negotiate their individual ways of accessing online materials available as part of a blended learning Module. As students studying international business in a post 1992 institution, the equality of access to the institution itself through widening participation policies was intended to equate with equal access to study through the University’s Virtual Learning Environment, WebCT. However, Charles’ learning space is encapsulated within a life lived with privilege, power and personal space. This context of controlled physical spaces enabled him to spread out and to work; Charles’ narration positions him as being prepared to work hard and effectively in the comfort of his own home, where he can shut out the world. Kwame, on the other hand, has to struggle to control the spaces he encounters. He must negotiate the physical space of a new country with an unfamiliar transport system, and the learning space constituted by a technology that renders him powerless and unable to contribute in the VLE. He uses friends and family to help him make sense of this alien new world – coming from Ghana to study in the UK, he finds settling into UK life difficult. In his interview, Kwame places a high value on the technological drivers of the course, and this is reflected through his explanations of his country, and their need to move forward with technology. It is reflected also in his previous study experience: Kwame has (on paper) computing and IT skills, but the explanation of how this is taught in Higher Education in Ghana (in large classes of 70, where students were offered theory but limited access to machines) offers insights into how highly he values access to this scarce commodity. Finally, this interview offers an insight into the role of the assistance of a more experienced friend, and how this can offer a conceptual framework to help to explain how this man eventually came to succeed on his own terms. It is already well established that the traditional conception of the digital divide as a problem of access is an over-simplification; what this study shows is that even when open access facilities are provided, the disadvantaged are not as well placed to take advantage of this those who already hold social advantage. The “flexibility” offered by VLEs does not solve access issues either, but instead adds new spaces (e.g. the home) where these issues must be negotiated. Moreover, this study suggests that the BNIM method offers a richness and depth of interpretation which leaves us feeling we know much more about how an individual student perceives the world in terms of the digital divide, and how the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ experience access to ICT in ways that replicate the unequal power structures of society. ReferencesCarvin, A More than just Access Fitting Literacy and Content into the Digital divide equation Educause Review November/December 2000 accessed at www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/articles006/erm/0063.pdf Cresswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design Choosing among five traditions. London, Sage. Loader,B (ed) Cyberspace Divide: Equality, Agency and Policy in the Information Society, Routlege London and New York 1998 OECD and Centre for Educational Research and Innovation with the National centre on Adult Literacy (NCAL) Schooling for tomorrow: learning to bridge the digital divide 2000 West, L. (1996). Beyond Fragments. London, Taylor Francis. Wengraf, T. (2001) Qualitative Research Interviewing. London, Sage Publications. back to list of accepted papers |
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updated 15 March 2007 |
