Desi Seminar
The digital divide is still widespread and, therefore, a societally relevant and important topic of IS research. While the digital divide discussion extends into several reference fields, IS scholarship has its own and unique tradition of digital divide research. In our work, we review the current state of this literature and identify a set of conceptual issues that remain unaddressed today. While these open issues hold back the further conceptual development, we also suspect that theorizing in other IS research domains could help advance the conceptualization of the digital divide. Unfortunately, these two areas of work remain unintegrated. We begin to identify potentially relevant areas of IS research, specifically: effective use, collective use, and design related issues. If IS scholars were able to fully leverage these theoretical insights, we are confident this would not only advance IS ability to work on the digital divide but would also inform reference disciplines.
Bio:
Eveline Hage is an assistant professor of Change Management at the Department of Innovation Management & Strategy of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Her research interests include digital inequality; social implications of IT use; IT adoption and use by older adults; IT implementation in community settings; and E-Health. Through her work she aims to contribute to the co-creation of a socio-technical context that empowers individuals to enhance their well-being. Email: m.l.hage@rug.nl