The Digital Reproduction of Inequality
The Digital Reproduction of Inequality
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不平等的数字再现
DOI：
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发表时间：
2008
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
E. Hargittai
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文献类型：
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作者：
E. Hargittai
到21世纪初，信息和通信技术(ICT)已成为许多人日常生活的必需品。信息和通信技术的进步提供了与其他人和大量信息的即时连接，这是前所未有的。随着经济日益依赖知识密集型活动，知识和信息在人口中的分配不均可能越来越与阶层分化联系在一起。20世纪90年代中期，互联网刚刚开始向普通民众扩散，关于其对社会不平等的影响的辩论就如雨后春笋般涌现。从社会流动性的角度来看，数字媒体可以为个人、组织和社会提供改善其地位的机会，而不受现有限制。然而，从社会再生产的角度来看，信息和通信技术可能会增加已经享有特权的人获得的机会，同时导致弱势群体日益边缘化，从而加剧现有的不平等。关于信息和通信技术对社会分层的影响，最初的大多数关注集中在哪些部分的人口可以使用因特网或哪些人是因特网使用者(例如，Bimber 2000；Hoffman和Novak 1998)。访问通常被定义为在家里或工作场所拥有一台联网的机器。更具体地说，使用指的是人们对媒介的实际使用，而不仅仅是获得它。“数字鸿沟”一词成为一种流行的表述，用来概括人们对媒体不平等扩散的关切。这一概念通常被理解为二进制术语：某人要么可以访问介质，要么没有，有人要么使用互联网，要么不使用。
By the beginning of the 21 century, information and communication technologies (ICT) had become a staple of many people’s everyday lives. The level of instantaneous connectivity – to others and to an abundance of information – afforded by advances in ICT is unprecedented. With economies increasingly dependent on knowledge-intensive activities, the unequal distribution of knowledge and information access across the population may be linked increasingly to stratification. No sooner did the Internet start diffusing to the general population in the mid-1990s did debates spring up about its implications for social inequality. From the perspective of social mobility, digital media could offer people, organizations and societies the opportunity to improve their positions regardless of existing constraints. From the point-of-view of social reproduction, however, ICT could exacerbate existing inequalities by increasing the opportunities available to the already privileged while leading to the growing marginalization of the disadvantaged. Most initial attention concerning ICT’s implications for social stratification focused on what segments of the population have access to the Internet or are Internet users (e.g., Bimber 2000; Hoffman and Novak 1998). Access is usually defined as having a networkconnected machine in one’s home or workplace. Use more specifically refers to people’s actual use of the medium beyond merely having access to it. The term “digital divide” became a popular expression to sum up concerns about the unequal diffusion of the medium. The concept is most often understood in binary terms: someone either has access to the medium or does not, someone either uses the Internet or does not.