Some researchers of digital inequality have applied a Bourdieusian framework in their efforts to understand and explain the complexity of digital inequalities. They have found in the theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu a useful lens to explain how uneven relations of power and the reproduction of an unequal social order are at the core of digital participation gaps.
Using Bourdieu’s theory of capital, for instance, Seiter (2008), Zillien & Hargittai (2009), Hargittai and Walejko (2008), Robinson (2009), and Straubhaar et al. (2012) have argued that social class and status, in addition to practice and skill, shape how people use digital media. According to these researchers, social positionality shapes a particular disposition (“habitus” in Bourdieu’s terminology) towards the use of Internet and new media. Such a disposition is determined not only by access to economic capital, but also by access to cultural and social capital.
In their study of Internet usage among U.S. adults (N=6,053), Zillien & Hargittai, for instance, found that individuals from a higher socioeconomic background and an advantaged position in the social hierarchy “are much more likely to engage in so-called capital-enhancing activities online than are their less privileged counterparts” (2009, 274). Capital-enhancing activities include using technology to take part in economic and political life, and having access to information such as stock prices and news that is beneficial for maintaining and advancing a social status.
Likewise, Shradie (2011) found in her national study of U.S. adults (N=2,447) that there is a digital production gap shaped by social class. According to her, despite the expanded opportunities to participate in the production of online content and contribute to the digital public sphere, the poor and working class have not been able to use the tools and produce at the same rate as privileged users. Shradie found that cultural and material factors, including a high status disposition, “are more significant for the production of online content than they are for consumption” (165).
The Bourdieusian approach has been instrumental in the critical analysis of digital inequalities from a social class perspective. It has helped scholars to bring to the forefront issues of social stratification and power positionality that were hidden in early discussions about the digital divide. Using this approach, scholars have revealed that the diffusion of digital technology and the spread of digital practices and skills within a highly stratified society tend to reproduce an unequal social order. Because digital inequalities are systemic and rooted in deep socioeconomic structures, they are more difficult to overcome than early theories of the digital divide suggested.
References
Hargittai, E., & Walejko, G., (2008). The participation divide. Information, Communication and Society 11 (2), 239–256.
Robinson, L. (2009). A taste for the necessary. A Bourdieuian approach to digital inequality. Information, Communication and Society 12 (4), 488.
Seiter, E. (2008). Practicing at Home: Computers, Pianos, and Cultural Capital. Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MITPress.
Schradie, J. (2011). The Digital Production Gap: the Digital Divide and Web 2.0 Collide. Poetics. 39 (2).
Straubhaar, J., Spence, J., Tufekci, Z. and Lentz, R. (2012). Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin. Austin: University of Texas Press
Zillien, N. & Hargittai, E., (2009). Digital distinction. Social Science Quarterly 90 (2), 274–291.
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