Today, we observe how multicultural societies in the Global South and Global North regions of the world are facing new challenges brought up by the digital divide. Previously analysed by scholars as inequalities in access to Internet and ICTs (van Dijk, 2013) and in use of digital technologies (Helsper, 2002), today digital divide has extended to new levels, forms and domains. This includes inequalities in benefits or tangible outcomes people receive through their online engagement (van Dijk, 2020), different level of users’ digital capital (Gladkova, Vartanova, & Ragnedda, 2020), and previously understudied gaps such as algorithms divide (Ragnedda, 2020). Given the fact that social and digital inequalities tend to reinforce each other, those who are more socially advantaged tend to get the most out of the Internet, further reinforcing their social position by using ICTs. This problem gains particular importance in big multicultural and multi-ethnic societies, where providing equal opportunities for online engagement for all minor groups spread across a huge territory of the country can be a serious challenge.
Previous research on Russia (Vartanova, & Gladkova, 2019), Brazil (Nishijima et al, 2017), China (Song et al, 2020), India (Rani, 2020), South Africa (Mutsvairo, & Ragnedda, 2019) and many other multicultural nations that have so far received less coverage in scholarly literature compared to European countries (van Deursen, & van Dijk, 2013), Middle East (Jamil, 2020) or the U.S. (Dutton, & Reisdorf, 2019) showed that many ethnic and cultural groups across the globe face common difficulties in accessing Internet and ICTs. Many indigenous groups are traditionally based in regions that are less economically advantaged or have harsh climatic conditions and low urbanization level, which affects cost and speed of connection, as well as availability of infrastructure and ICTs to a broad population in those regions.
As Helsper (2008) notes, technological forms of exclusion are a reality for significant segments of the population, and for some people they reinforce and deepen existing disadvantages. This is particularly true for multi-ethnic societies, where small ethnic groups are often underrepresented in online space due to lack of access, skills, motivation or even technical abilities (lack of computer software or coding systems for some extinct languages), and therefore are missing benefits – both professional and personal – from online engagement. Recent challenges brought by the pandemic intensified these processes, leading to a situation when minor groups did not have access to relevant – and also verified and trustworthy information sources online, could not use online services (healthcare, transport, education and entertainment, etc.), or communicate with peers on a distance during lockdown.
Although digital exclusion of ethnic and cultural groups is an important problem by themselves, the book approaches this problem through a broader theoretical lens, that is Cultural Discourse Studiestheoretical paradigm. Following Shi-xu, we argue that culture is an integral part of the life practice of a social community in relation to others, complex and dynamic, rather than fixed to people, place or time (Shi-xu, 2016: 2). We intend to show in this book that in the new digital environment, ICTs and Internet studies today are no longer limited to the technology domain, becoming important topics for communication/discourse/cultural studies too, with new digital cultures and ‘cultures of the Internet’ (Dutton, & Reisdorf, 2019) appearing and new digital means enabling us to ‘identify, characterize, explain, interpret and appraise culturally divergent, productive or competing discourses’ (Shi-xu, 2016: 3). As a result, we will show in this volume that the digital divide today is turning from a technological access- and skill-based problem into a social and culture-oriented one.
In this book, we will discuss digital inequalities minor ethnic and cultural groups across the world face today – in regard to access, skills, and benefits from using ICTs, i. e. three levels of the digital divide that have been previously identified by scholars (van Dijk, 2020). Using specific case studies from different multicultural societies in the Global South and Global North, we will show how these inequalities affect cross-cultural communication from a cultural discourse studies perspective (Shi-xu, 2015), as well as what impact digital divide can have upon people’s identities, languages and cultures (Wojnowski, 2015; Davies, 1997). We will show in this book that regardless of national specifics and current peculiarities of communication systems, there are challenges all multicultural/multi-ethnic societies are facing nowadays under ongoing digitalization process. The primary aim of the book therefore is to show how multicultural societies across the globe are developing under the challenges brought by digitalization (digital exclusion, new forms and levels of the digital divide, new professional and personal demands in terms of digital engagement, etc.), and how multicultural discourses are developing in this new context.
Submission instructions
Proposals should include an abstract of 500-750 words (excluding references) as well as a full list of author(s) with affiliation(s) and short bio(s). Please submit your proposal as one file (PDF) with your names clearly stated on the first page to gladkova_a@list.ru by May 10th, 2021.
Timeline
Abstract submission deadline: May 10th, 2021
Notification on accepted abstracts: June 1st, 2021
Full chapter submission deadline (7,000-9,000 words): November 1st, 2021
Preliminary publication date: summer 2022
Editors: Elena Vartanova, Anna Gladkova, Shi-xu
Publisher: Routledge
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