1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910484218703321

Autore

Ragnedda Massimo

Titolo

Enhancing Digital Equity : Connecting the Digital Underclass / / by Massimo Ragnedda

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2020

ISBN

9783030490799

3030490793

Edizione

[1st ed. 2020.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (114 pages)

Collana

Palgrave pivot

Disciplina

303.4833

Soggetti

Communication

Digital media

Technology - Sociological aspects

Media and Communication

Digital and New Media

Science, Technology and Society

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Theorizing Inequalities -- 2. Old digital inequalities: Digital Divide -- 3. New digital Inequalities: Algorithms divide -- 4. Connecting the digital Underclass -- 5. Conclusions.

Sommario/riassunto

This book highlights how, in principle, digital technologies present an opportunity to reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance social and civil rights, and promote equity. However, to achieve these goals, it is necessary to promote digital equity and connect the digital underclass. The book focuses on how the advent of technologies may become a barrier to social mobility and how, by concentrating resources and wealth in few hands, the digital revolution is giving rise to the digital oligarchy, further penalizing the digital underclass. Socially-disadvantaged people, living at the margins of digital society, are penalized both in terms of accessing-using-benefits (three levels of digital divide) but also in understanding-programming-treatment of new digital technologies (three levels of algorithms divide). The advent and implementation of tools that rely on algorithms



to make decisions has further penalized specific social categories by normalizing inequalities in the name of efficiency and rationalization.