The Internet and Social Inequalities

James C. Witte, Susan E. Mannon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781135173128
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Ideal for use as a core or secondary text in lower division social inequalities or social problems courses, this book explains how the changing nature and uses of the Internet not only mirror today's social inequalities, but also are at the heart of how stratification is now taking place. A pioneering work, both intellectually, and pedagogically.

1
A SOCIOLOGY OF THE INTERNET

Although it has several other properties that have institutional consequences, on the whole the Internet is loosely coupled to the institutional world around it. It does not inherently promote freedom or oppression, hierarchy or decentralization, privacy or social control, individualist or collectivist values, markets or socialism. Considered narrowly as a technology, it is capable of participating in any combination of social orders. Considered more broadly as a malleable architecture interacting with a complex and contested institutional environment, however, the Internet is a complicated phenomenon indeed.

—Agre 2002

Introduction

For many young people today, it’s hard to imagine a time before the Internet, harder still to imagine a time when people relied on typewriters and whiteout. But consider these statistics. As late as 1994, only 11 percent of American households had access to the Internet (NTIA 1995). By 2007, that statistic was well over 60 percent.¹ And this was just the figure for household Internet access; well over 70 percent of American households had someone who had access to the Internet at some location. In the span of just one decade, the Internet had entered our homes, our schools, and our workplaces—not to mention our libraries, our cafes, and our cell phones—to become a major feature of daily life. Given the rapid spread of Internet technology, it’s easy to see why the Internet might be celebrated for bringing about a social transformation in American life.

But has the Internet really brought about such a profound transformation? Even in the early days of the Internet, many suspected that information technology was mirroring rather than transforming social divides in the United States. Researchers pointed to a racial divide (Hoffman and Novak 1998) for example, and a rural–urban divide (Strover 1999) in Internet access. Policy makers and social scientists even began to speak of a “digital divide,” or a divide between those who had access to the Internet and those who, due to lack of opportunity or interest, remained ofefline (NTIA 1998, 1999). More recent research suggests that new “digital divides” are emerging, as Internet technology evolves and certain groups become more sophisticated at navigating the web (DiMaggio et al. 2001). And some scholars argue that we need to move beyond a singular concern over Internet access to tackle differences in Internet skills and behavior as they manifest among Internet users. As DiMaggio et al. (2001, p. 52) argue: “Now that more than half of Americans now go online, we should pursue a more differentiated approach to understanding the Internet’s implications for social and economic inequality – one that focuses upon the extent and causes of different returns to Internet use for different kinds of users.” Hargittai (2006), for example, points out that spelling mistakes limit the ability of the less educated to take advantage of online search engines, a limitation that is compounded for some by an inability to read and comprehend materials once they find them.

DiMaggio et al. (2001) raise the importance of looking sociologically at these digital divides. Specifically, they point to social inequalities that linger long after the headlines about the Internet’s revolutionary potential. These inequalities are no small matter. As political participation moves online, newspapers and books evolve into digital formats, social networking occurs through web applications, and e-commerce expands, participation in public life necessitates some Internet access and competency. Those without an email address or a Facebook profile may become excluded from the larger society. Internet access and use, then, are not simply mapped onto existing inequalities; they may exacerbate them over time as ofefline groups become marginalized from the Internet and from popular forms of political, social, and economic participation. In its current form, then, the Internet is a paradox of twenty-first century American life, at once an emblem of a free and open society and an active reproducer and possible accelerator of social inequality.

The purpose of this book is to explore this paradox by moving beyond inequalities in Internet access to explore differences in how we use the Internet and how we benefit from being online. Its relevance to you, the reader, is real. Think of all the things you do (or don’t do) online every day, the information you have access to, the people you interact with, the products you buy, and the words you share. You’re not simply typing and clicking; you’re participating in a social world in which patterns of inclusion and exclusion may be observed. These patterns are of interest to sociologists, who study how individuals interact in the context of larger social structures. The norms and rules that govern social interaction do not stop when we go online, although they might be transformed. The Internet can and should be studied from a sociological perspective because it is fundamentally a social institution. Who has enjoyed access to the Internet? And how does this access combine with variables like income and education to turn a profit, consolidate power, and mark status? Finally, how do these patterns exclude segments of the population from the social, political, and economic potential of the Internet? These are the questions that we’ll explore throughout this book. First, however, let’s explore further the research on the “digital divide” and the history of this divide.

The Digital Divide

No one denies that the Internet and related forms of communication and information technology have had a profound effect on American society and beyond. Yet, as we’ve mentioned, an increasing number of people now acknowledge a “digital divide.” By the late 1990s, policy makers and researchers noticed that the digital revolution was leaving many groups behind. The 1999 United Nations Human Development Report, for example, observed the following about Internet use worldwide:

The typical Internet user worldwide is male, under 35 years old, with a college education and high income, urban-based and English-speaking—a member of a very elite minority worldwide. The consequence? The network society is creating parallel communications systems: one for those with income, education and—literally—connections, giving plentiful information at low cost and high speed; the other for those without connections, blocked by high barriers of time, cost and uncertainty and dependent on outdated information. With people in these two systems living and competing side by side, the advantages of connection are overpowering. The voices and concerns of people already living in human poverty—lacking incomes, education and access to public institutions—are being increasingly marginalized. (UN 1999, p. 63)

This observation gets to the heart of what social scientists call the “digital divide,” or the gap between those with access to the Internet and those without.

Because inequalities in Internet access have such far-reaching consequences, working toward universal access has been a major concern of policy makers. In the United States, for example, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has tracked Internet access and developed policy recommendations to close gaps in such access (NTIA 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002). Among the “digital divides” noted by the NTIA is a divide between urban and rural areas, between whites and non-whites, between the young and old, and between the economically active and inactive (see DiMaggio et al. 2001 for a review). The NTIA and the literature more generally tends to frame this discussion in terms of haves and have nots. Either you have Internet access at home, work, or school or you do not have Internet access. Although it is certainly important to study differences in Internet access, there are also important differences in Internet use among those who enjoy some form of access. Perhaps an individual has Internet access at home, but their dial-up speed is slow and hence their Internet usage is limited. Perhaps an individual has high-speed Internet, but little knowledge of search engines and how to “surf ” the Internet, narrowing the scope of what they can get out of being online. The research and policy agenda must be broad enough to tackle these differences and the inequalities they produce.

Given the complexities in Internet inequality, this study approaches the digital divide differently from bodies like the NTIA. It shows how Internet inequalities are manifesting among the online population and the overall population. In doing so, it builds on recent research suggesting that there is something more to the “digital divide” than simply access. Scholars have discovered differences in Internet use that include variations in connection speed (Kling 1998), where individuals access the Internet (Bimber 2000), what technical and cognitive skills they bring to bear in navigating the Internet (Hargittai 2002), the length of time they spend online (Bonfadelli 2002), and the purpose for which they use the Internet (Spooner and Rainey 2000). In this book, we’ll consider differences in how frequently people go online, what activities they do online, and what they get out of their online experience. We hypothesize that these differences map onto existing inequalities in American society, with historically disadvantaged groups going online with less frequency, for less productive purposes, and for a smaller social and financial return. We also suggest that these differences could exacerbate existing inequalities, such that privileged social groups consolidate their power and heighten their privileged status through the use of the Internet.

In addition to building on a critical area of research, we’ll tell this story through the lens of some classic sociological perspectives: the coneflict perspective, the cultural perspective, and the functionalist perspective. Each perspective provides a provocative explanation for how and why Internet inequalities exist. Using recent data on Internet use in American society, we’ll test some of these ideas empirically to determine their explanatory power. After reading this book, you’ll have a sense of the variety of ways that sociologists can examine the Internet as a social institution and social structure, not to mention a greater appreciation for what differences in Internet use might mean for social inequality.

DiMaggio et al. (2001) contend that inequalities embedded in Internet technology are not due to the technology itself, but to the ways in which that technology has developed over time. Thus, before we embark on this theoretical and empirical treatment of the Internet, a brief history of the Internet is in order. We’ll use a novel source of data to explore this history. Internationally, two groups are largely responsible for developing and coordinating Internet standards and protocols: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Both groups are part of the international non-profit organization known as the Internet Society and both have published a series of “Requests for Comment” (RFCs).² Numbered 1 through 5242, the RFC series documents the development of the principles of network computing, including the TCP/IP communication protocols that are the technical backbone of today’s Internet.³ In addition to their technical content, the RFCs offer unique insights into how individuals and groups contested and negotiated the principles of the Internet, its organizational structure, and its major design features.⁴ This discussion will provide some context and background for the analytic chapters that follow.

The Advent of Network Computing

The purpose of the early Internet was to provide a means of communication for U.S. political and military leaders in the event of nuclear war. Bafefled by the task of securing a central network facility against enemy missiles, staff researchers at the RAND Corporation proposed a novel solution in the early 1960s: create a communications network that could bypass a central command structure. The idea was to put in place a communications infrastructure that had no central authority, such that it could operate and remain intact even after command structures were destroyed during wartime. At first glance an elegant and creative solution, such a network required enormous technical development. Beginning in the fall of 1969, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded a team to build computer network nodes.

While one group of young Americans was fighting in the jungles of Vietnam and another was marching in the streets, a third group was preparing to build a computer network that would transform American society. In August of 1969, the first node was created at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). Three additional nodes were added later that fall at Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. A core group of network developers, primarily graduate students in computer science, operated out of the Network Measurement Center at UCLA. This group shared an intellectual outlook that closely mirrored the network that they would build—a decentralized, iconoclastic, can-do sensibility that did not take itself too seriously. Writing 30 years later, Steve Crocker, a pioneer of network computing, explains:

We were frankly too scared to imagine that we could define an all-inclusive set of protocols that would serve indefinitely. We envisioned a continual process of evolution and addition, and obviously this is what’s happened. The RFCs themselves also represented a certain sense of fear …. Mindful that our group was informal, junior and unchartered, I wanted to emphasize these notes were the beginning of a dialog and not an assertion of control. (RFC #255)

Despite the hesitancy and humility with which this group of junior scholars approached the development of the Internet, the technical skeleton that they would construct would serve as the foundation upon which our online world was built.

Though the Internet was born in a loosely organized environment, it did not take long for an organizational structure to emerge. For example, RFC#140, issued in 1971, sets out to organize and manage a growing group of scientists and research centers involved in the Internet’s construction. The need for some structure was understandable;...

Table of contents

• Contemporary Sociological Perspectives
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• SERIES FOREWORD
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1 A SOCIOLOGY OF THE INTERNET
• 2 INTERNET USE AMONG AMERICAN ADULTS
• 3 INTERNET INEQUALITY FROM A CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE
• 4 INTERNET INEQUALITY FROM A CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
• 5 INTERNET INEQUALITY FROM A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE
• 6 INEQUALITY AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX