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Worlds Apart: Exclusion-Processes in DDS

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Book cover Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches (Digital Cities 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2362))

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Abstract

More and more interfaces are designed for ‘everybody’, instead of with a specific user-group in mind. In practice, most of them are still used by the ‘typical Internet-user’, the highly educated, white young male with extensive computer and Internet-experience. Amsterdam-based digital city DDS is no exception to this rule. In this article, the interface of DDS is studied with the help of ten first-time users with a more diverse background. Did they face any barriers in using DDS? And what kind of work did they need to perform to use the interface? This study shows that the most serious problems the first-time users faced were not caused by a lack of skill, but by the different technological frame they had. Thus, a script-analysis with the help of ‘outsiders’ seems to be an effective way to uncover some exclusion-processes of a digital city.

I would like to thank Ellen van Oost, Sally Wyatt, Anne Sofie Laegran, Nelly Oudshoorn, Agnes Bolso and participants from the Lomskole, the EMTEL-network and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I also would like to thank the designers, users and first-time users of DDS who gave me their time and the opportunity to interview them.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Twente University, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Els Rommes

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  1. Els Rommes
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ube National College of Technology, Tokiwadai, Ube City, Yamaguchi Pref., 755-8555, Japan

    Makoto Tanabe

  2. Department of Social Sciences Netherlands Institute of Scientific Information NIWI, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Joan Muyskenweg 25, PO Box 95110, 1090 HC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Peter van den Besselaar

  3. Social Informatics Program, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Peter van den Besselaar

  4. Department of Social Informatics Laboratory for Global Information Network, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, 606-8501, Kyoto, Japan

    Toru Ishida

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Rommes, E. (2002). Worlds Apart: Exclusion-Processes in DDS. In: Tanabe, M., van den Besselaar, P., Ishida, T. (eds) Digital Cities II: Computational and Sociological Approaches. Digital Cities 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2362. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45636-8_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45636-8_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43963-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45636-0

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