Expanding Digital Divides Research: A Critical Political Economy of Social Media

This paper highlights, through a critical political economy approach, a number of inequalities, or “divides,” that have been neglected in digital divides research, divides arising from the domination of social media platform ownership by a few for-profit corporations. As a result, the paper calls for an expansion of digital divides research to include a critical examination of the empowerment relations flowing from the contexts of digital media technologies themselves and not just the contexts of users.