Abstract
The issue of digital inclusion has long preoccupied global digital policymakers, and, internationally, interdisciplinary research has examined how to best conceptualize, study and inform policy responses to the changing socio-technical landscape without amplifying existing or creating new inequities (Third 2016). Studies by coalitions including Global Kids Online, EU Kids Online, Digital Media and Learning, RErights.org and, indeed, the Technology and Wellbeing Roundtable all contribute to ongoing conversations about the relationship between inequality and children’s and young people’s digital technology access, use and participation. Crucially, these initiatives also reflect on the role of evidence in identifying the challenges and crafting strategies to minimize the potential negative impacts of the digital. Focusing on the Australian example, this chapter explores how digital inclusion has been framed in high-income, anglophone countries.
I don’t really think there’s anything, if you have access to the Internet, you can really be excluded from.
—Nick, male, 18, Ballarat, Australia (interview)
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Notes
- 1.
Amanda Third is an advisor to the Australian Digital Inclusion Index initiative.
- 2.
In 2017, the Australian Digital Inclusion Index calculated that Australians aged 14–24 years had a median digital inclusion score of 60.4, close behind the most digitally included population groups—those aged 25–34 (62.5) and 35–49 (62.25) years—and well ahead of men and women aged 50–64 (54) and 65+ (42.95) years (Thomas et al. 2017, 13). These median scores are the average of the scores for men and women in each age bracket.
- 3.
The research team acknowledges Vanessa Mendes Moreira de Sa, Cheryl Mangan and Naomi Berman for their assistance with data gathering, and Nukte Ogun, Sarah Minns, Sherene Idriss and Jane McCormack for their support in analysing and writing up the report to the Technology and Wellbeing Roundtable. We also thank Reachout.com and The Foundation for Young Australians for their support of this study.
- 4.
In this chapter, we use the term (digital) inclusion to signal forms of digital inclusion that seek to address social inclusion. Where we refer to dominant discourse, we use the term digital inclusion.
- 5.
These include streaming, playing or downloading content online, audiovisual communication via the Internet, conducting Internet transactions or payments, purchasing or selling a product online, creating or managing a site or blog and searching for advanced information (Thomas et al. 2017, 44).
- 6.
For example, research shows that young people who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander; living with chronic illness or disability; from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; living in rural and remote communities; same-sex attracted; or experiencing homelessness are more likely to encounter barriers to online access (Blanchard et al. 2008; Williams 2011).
- 7.
Interviewees did not participate in the focus groups. Across the interviews and focus groups, we worked with a balance of male and female participants.
- 8.
In Australia, public schools are fully funded by state, territory and federal government and educate approximately 65% of Australian children. Private schools, including Catholic and ‘independent’ schools, are funded via tuition fees, private income and federal government funding (which is calculated pro rata, dependent on their capacity to generate alternative sources of revenue) (Hanrahan 2018).
- 9.
Ethics protocols for this project required that transcripts did not identify individual participants by name.
- 10.
It should be noted that the uptake of smartphone connectivity renders measures of frequency and ‘time spent online’ problematic.
- 11.
The scores presented here are the average of the scores for men and women in each age bracket as presented in the ADII report (Thomas et al. 2017, 13).
- 12.
Participants used home and school computers predominantly for schoolwork or interest-based research, while mobile devices were mainly associated with managing day-to-day logistics, social interactions and self-expression.
- 13.
The National Assessment Program’s (NAP) Information and Communication Technology Literacy (ICTL) test assesses a sample of Year 6 and Year 10 Australian students every three years to determine their ability to use digital technologies to appropriately ‘access, manage, integrate and evaluate information, develop new understandings and communicate with others in order to participate effectively in society’ (Fraillon et al. 2018, 2). In 2017, the Foundation of Young Australians reported that 27% of 15-year-old Australians ‘demonstrated low proficiency in digital literacy’ (AlphaBeta 2017, 3). And in 2018, the NAP-ICTL sample test showed that only ‘54% of [Year 10] students attained proficiency’ (Urban 2018).
- 14.
The concept of digital capacities emerges from work funded by Google Australia and undertaken in 2016 by a team at Western Sydney University, including Amanda Third, Philippa Collin, Liam Magee, Emma Kearney, Louise Crabtree, Paul James, Tanya Notley and Justine Humphry.
- 15.
We use the term ‘digital life’ advisedly, to gesture recent controversies around Cambridge Analytica’s alleged exploitation of social media data.
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Third, A., Collin, P., Walsh, L., Black, R. (2019). Digital Inclusion. In: Young People in Digital Society. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57369-8_4
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