Beyond the ‘digital divide’

The increasing potential of the Internet to widen access to information and enhance communication capacity has brought opposing arguments about the social consequences of Internet use. Advocates of the ‘digital divide’ thesis argue that the Internet advantages privileged groups while further marginalizing disadvantaged social categories. Critics of the thesis see the expansion of the Internet as enabling and egalitarian, promoting social inclusion and facilitating democratic participation. In order to assess which view is more plausible, we examine the social barriers to Internet use in Australia over a five-year period, using multivariate analyses of national survey data. The notion of a ‘digital divide’ is too simplistic to capture the complexity of social barriers to Internet use. Although the Internet has become more accessible to all social categories, and further technological diffusion should widen this accessibility, household income, age, education and occupational class location remain as key dimensions of differential Internet use.