Data divide

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The data divide is the unequal relationship between those capable of collecting, storing, mining, and general management of immense volumes of data, and those whose data is collected. [1] Using the framework of the digital divide, the data divide posits that the evolving nature of data and big data has created divisions and inequalities in data ownership, access, analysis, collection, and the manipulation of personal data generated by information and communications technologies (ICTs). [1]

Contents

Theoretical framework

Early research in the digital divide concentrated on the divisions of access to information and digital technologies, demonstrating a split between the "haves" and the "have-nots": [2] those able to access and use digital technologies versus those who do not. Divisions were found to occur along multiple lines of inequality, including education, economic income, race, and gender. [2] The digital divide has several dimensions of access, including access to equipment or hardware, ownership, support networks, digital literacy, skill to use/navigate user interfaces, and so on. [2] The Ada Lovelace Institute notes that the digital divide has exacerbated a data divide. [3] As a result, the dimensions of access present within the digital divide are still present. The data divide additionally puts in contrast the "haves" who have access to large-scale datasets and the "have-nots" who do not have access to large-scale datasets nor the capability to navigate them. [4] For example, private companies, often social media companies, are the only ones who have access to extensive social data. Boyd and Crawford suggest divisions are also emphasized through research and universities: well-funded universities can buy access to datasets and the students who attend would be more likely to be bridged into work within the same social media companies, while less prestigious institutions would be less likely to afford their students the same opportunities. [4]

COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in governments worldwide issuing stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, quarantines, restrictions, and closures. Interruptions to schooling, work, business, and other public service operations caused a massive shift to moving otherwise in-person activities online. Operations like doctor's visits, online schooling, shipping, and remote working require access to high-speed or broadband internet access and digital technologies. [5] This mass adoption of data-driven digital technologies is what the Ada Lovelace Institute describes as a digital surge. [3] In a report with the Health Foundation, the Ada Lovelace Institute found the four key elements that emerged through a public attitudes survey: a data divide based on access to data-driven technologies, a data divide based on awareness and skill, a data divide based on comfort with using health-related tracking apps, and a data divide based on choosing not to use health-tracking apps. [3] In this, the Ada Lovelace Institute stressed the data divide in users not being able to access data that may benefit them and the dangers of not being represented to address health inequalities. [3]

Aspects

Infrastructure

General advances in technology, computing power, storage, and information management practices have enabled huge quantities of data to be both produced and analyzed. [6]

Tim Berners-Lee notes an increasing detachment between people and their own personal data, that regular users of digital devices or other services do not have the same capabilities to utilize data to the extent that ICTs or data brokerage firms do. [7] Berners-Lee argues that if personal data has the potential to benefit users, then users should be able to access and utilize them. However, Mark Andrejevic notes that even if users were given access to their own data, they would not be able to put it to use as effectively as data collectors because user data is not collected in isolation. [7] Instead, data collectors accumulate data within a broader environment. By connecting and individual's interests to the profiles of other users, collectors can filter through content and interest patterns to recommend the content they may deem relevant to an individual. The capacities for storing, collecting, and analyzing data requires the necessary technological infrastructures, datasets, software, and processing power. [7] Being able to extract information out of large datasets necessitates access to machines, databases, and advanced algorithms. [7]

Smart city infrastructures are emblematic of the ways that sensors facilitated by big data technologies capture information to manage issues in urban city centers. Processing technologies may relate to issues around finance, trade, social welfare, etc. [6] For example, municipal governments may identify and monitor citizens, companies, organizations, update their records, map profiles, perform data analyses to spot trends or issues, track services, and so on. [6] Many smart city systems track data on a granular level, and while some governments have opted for open data approaches with dashboards and KPIs[ clarification needed ] on display, some governments are not fully transparent and do not share their processes with the public. [6] In this sense, the data divide is represented by governments capturing real-time data on citizens, whose data is used to further manage and govern city centers. [6]

Digital literacy

Being able to work with large-scale datasets and having the skills to navigate them requires types of knowledge that tend to only be available to those who have access to advanced machines, databases, and algorithms. [7] Large databases enabled by big data are too large for any person or any group of people to understand on their own, which is why companies use tools and technologies assisted by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on. [6] This divide is not only in the sense of those who have and those who do not. [7] This divide also exists in categorical processes, ontological ways of thinking of data, and application of data. [7] Companies with access to data are able to engage with robust and complex means of sorting. Individual use of collected data simply cannot measure up, especially if enabled within new work environments or communities without proper knowledge sharing or training. [7] For example, failures to adopt new technologies into key industries such as agriculture represents aspects in both the digital and data divide. [8] Lack of data literacy can lead to data deluges – the burden of having and overwhelming amount of data without the capability to extract any meaningful information from datasets. [9]

Implications

A lack of collected information can create disparities which can eventually lead to information poverty. [9] Information poverty stems from a lack of data about a given concept, where the data poverty can have a cumulative effect. This can snowball from individuals to governments on a national scale. [9] This may become especially problematic when considering that those with access to information can act on data and thereby influence the lives of others in ways that people may not be able to concretely see. [7] For example, a 2007 report from the World Health Organization shows that health information is one of the six fundamental building blocks of a well-functioning health system. [10] Access to quality health data is essential to resolving outbreaks, sicknesses, or other disparities in health; however, many countries, particularly in the Global South, do not have access to the relevant data sources that would allow them to otherwise address health inequities. [9]

Solutions

Overcoming the digital divide itself may provide populations with the means to access information and solve digital inequities, however this would also mean further exacerbating the data divide. [7]

Data activists and information professionals do have the ability to help bridge the data divide through social action including crowdsourcing, citizen science, data cooperatives, hackathons, and civic hacking. These events seek to disrupt and challenge the status quo by cooperating with citizens to better understand quality of access, raise awareness, and allow citizens to generate data for their own uses. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital media</span> Any media that are encoded in machine-readable formats

In mass communication, digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device, including digital data storage media and digital broadcasting. Digital defines as any data represented by a series of digits, and media refers to methods of broadcasting or communicating this information. Together, digital media refers to mediums of digitized information broadcast through a screen and/or a speaker. This also includes text, audio, video, and graphics that are transmitted over the internet for viewing or listening to on the internet.

The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) have eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage, for they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.

The global digital divide describes global disparities, primarily between developed and developing countries, in regards to access to computing and information resources such as the Internet and the opportunities derived from such access. As with a smaller unit of analysis, this gap describes an inequality that exists, referencing a global scale.

The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to the growing concerns of technology as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedom of information</span> Freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information

Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, indigenous, and traditional knowledge; freedom of information, building of open knowledge resources, including open Internet and open standards, and open access and availability of data; preservation of digital heritage; respect for cultural and linguistic diversity, such as fostering access to local content in accessible languages; quality education for all, including lifelong and e-learning; diffusion of new media and information literacy and skills, and social inclusion online, including addressing inequalities based on skills, education, gender, age, race, ethnicity, and accessibility by those with disabilities; and the development of connectivity and affordable ICTs, including mobile, the Internet, and broadband infrastructures".

Digital literacy is an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information by utilizing typing or digital media platforms. It is a combination of both technical and cognitive abilities in using information and communication technologies to create, evaluate, and share information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open data</span> Openly accessible data

Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license.

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in China. As the largest developing country in the world, China faces a severe digital divide, which exists not only between mainland China and the developed countries, but also among its own regions and social groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of the Internet</span> Analysis of Internet communities through sociology

The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships, and concepts of the self. Sociologists are concerned with the social implications of the technology; new social networks, virtual communities and ways of interaction that have arisen, as well as issues related to cyber crime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital citizen</span> Person using IT to engage in society, politics, and government

The term digital citizen is used with different meanings. According to the definition provided by Karen Mossberger, one of the authors of Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, digital citizens are "those who use the internet regularly and effectively." In this sense a digital citizen is a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobile technology</span> Technology used for cellular communication

Mobile technology is the technology used for cellular communication. Mobile technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years. Since the start of this millennium, a standard mobile device has gone from being no more than a simple two-way pager to being a mobile phone, GPS navigation device, an embedded web browser and instant messaging client, and a handheld gaming console. Many experts believe that the future of computer technology rests in mobile computing with wireless networking. Mobile computing by way of tablet computers is becoming more popular. Tablets are available on the 3G and 4G networks. Mobile technology has different meanings in different aspects, mainly mobile technology in information technology and mobile technology in basketball technology, mainly based on the wireless technology of wireless devices equipment information technology integration.

Digital health is a discipline that includes digital care programs, technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and to make medicine more personalized and precise. It uses information and communication technologies to facilitate understanding of health problems and challenges faced by people receiving medical treatment and social prescribing in more personalised and precise ways. The definitions of digital health and its remits overlap in many ways with those of health and medical informatics.

Civic technology, or civic tech, enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process. It includes information and communications technology supporting government with software built by community-led teams of volunteers, nonprofits, consultants, and private companies as well as embedded tech teams working within government.

Politics and technology encompasses concepts, mechanisms, personalities, efforts, and social movements that include, but are not necessarily limited to, the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). Scholars have begun to explore how internet technologies influence political communication and participation, especially in terms of what is known as the public sphere.

Data philanthropy describes a form of collaboration in which private sector companies share data for public benefit. There are multiple uses of data philanthropy being explored from humanitarian, corporate, human rights, and academic use. Since introducing the term in 2011, the United Nations Global Pulse has advocated for a global "data philanthropy movement".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital divide in Canada</span> Overview of the role of the digital divide in Canada

The digital divide in Canada refers to the discrepancy that exists between Canadians who have access to information and communication technologies (ICT) and the benefits they provide compared to those who do not. This divide can be the result of many factors, including high costs for technology and online access, differences in the availability of online connectivity resources in different locations across the country, and lacking digital literacy. The digital divide in Canada also stems from income inequality among Canadians and differences in online practices exhibited by those of different age, gender, first language, and cultural background.

The digital divide in South Korea refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in South Korea in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital divide by continent, area and country</span>

The digital divide is an economic and social inequality with regard to access to, use of, or impact of information and communication technologies (ICT). Factors causing the divide can vary depending on the country and culture, as can the potential solutions for minimizing or closing the divide.

The digital divide in France refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in France in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artificial intelligence in government</span> Use of AI in government areas

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a range of uses in government. It can be used to further public policy objectives, as well as assist the public to interact with the government. According to the Harvard Business Review, "Applications of artificial intelligence to the public sector are broad and growing, with early experiments taking place around the world." Hila Mehr from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University notes that AI in government is not new, with postal services using machine methods in the late 1990s to recognise handwriting on envelopes to automatically route letters. The use of AI in government comes with significant benefits, including efficiencies resulting in cost savings, and reducing the opportunities for corruption. However, it also carries risks.

References

  1. 1 2 McCarthy, Matthew T. (2016-12-06). "The big data divide and its consequences: The big data divide and its consequences". Sociology Compass. 10 (12): 1131–1140. doi:10.1111/soc4.12436.
  2. 1 2 3 Attewell, Paul (2001). "Comment: The First and Second Digital Divides". Sociology of Education. 74 (3): 252–259. doi:10.2307/2673277. ISSN   0038-0407. JSTOR   2673277.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "The data divide". www.adalovelaceinstitute.org. Retrieved 2022-11-22.
  4. 1 2 Boyd, Danah; Crawford, Kate (2012-06-01). "Critical Questions for Big Data". Information, Communication & Society. 15 (5): 662–679. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878. ISSN   1369-118X. S2CID   51843165.
  5. ↑ McClain, Colleen; Vogels, Emily A.; Perrin, Andrew; Sechopoulos, Stella; Rainie, Lee (2021-09-01). "The Internet and the Pandemic" . Retrieved 2022-11-22.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kitchin, Rob (2022). The data revolution : a critical analysis of big data, open data & data infrastructures (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. ISBN   978-1-5297-3375-4. OCLC   1285687714.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Andrejevic, Mark (2014). "The Big Data Divide". International Journal of Communication. 8 (1): 1673–1689. ISSN   1932-8036.
  8. ↑ Marshall, Amber; Turner, Krystle; Richards, Carol; Foth, Marcus; Dezuanni, Michael (2022-04-26). "Critical factors of digital AgTech adoption on Australian farms: from digital to data divide". Information, Communication & Society. 25 (6): 868–886. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056712. ISSN   1369-118X. S2CID   248546034.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Naudé, Wim; Vinuesa, Ricardo (2021-08-19). "Data deprivations, data gaps and digital divides: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic". Big Data & Society. 8 (2): 205395172110255. doi:10.1177/20539517211025545. ISSN   2053-9517. S2CID   238685901.
  10. ↑ Everybody's business : strengthening health systems to improve health outcomes : WHO's frmaework for action. World Health Organization. Geneva: World Health Organization. 2007. ISBN   978-92-4-159607-7. OCLC   235025778.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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