About inequalities and the digital divide... Jen Schradie

About inequalities and the digital divide... Jen Schradie

Conversation with Sergei Guriev (podcast)
  • Image pathdoc (via Shutterstock)Image pathdoc (via Shutterstock)

Conversations with Sergei Guriev

What is the digital divide today, and its evolution since the 1990s, given the emergence of new technologies? Should be talk about digital inequalities?
Today mobile broadband internet is accessible pretty much everywhere. Why is class still mattering? Why does that still a social divide around people of different class, ethnicity, gender?
What is going to happen to digital inequalities as, digital technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, more available, better, speed is available, better devices, are available at lower prices ?
What inequalities in the use of artificial intelligence?

Listen the podcast On Digital Inequality and its Political implications, 40 min., may 2024, part of the Sergei Guriev conversations [Ausha - Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music...]

Jen Schradie (image Alexis Lecomte / Sciences Po)As a digital scholar, It's been both fun and challenging to track digital inequalities because they're changing so rapidly!

From the 1990s to 2000, Twitter was launched, YouTube was diffused... and so there was all this utopianism around, how anyone can, be a content producer, but I sought to really look at who are these people creating online content.

I do want to challenge this idea that everyone is online.

There's a lot of arguments around how, especially among youth, too much digital technology can impact, negative, have a negative impacts on mental health. But it's actually, people that have less internet access that have, lower self-reports of social well-being.

My research switches the causal arrow and really looks at how do societal differences shape the use of technology itself.

People who are in more precarious work positions, are much less likely to feel safe posting online something that might be perceived as as controversial.

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