Module 1

Internet as a mass medium

Internet has revolutionized the communication world. It has fundamentally changed the way
people learn, play, create and communicate. Today it has become a part of our life. It is not just
a technology, but an engine of social change, one that has modified work habits, education, social
relations and maybe most important, our hopes and dreams.

The Internet scenario has undergone a transformation in the past few years. In 2015 it has
reached 46.4% of the world population and 30% of Indian population. In 2010, it had penetrated
28.7 percent of the global population and only 8.5 percent of the Indian population (internet
world stats, 2016) India is one of the fastest growing Internet markets in the word growing at
14% in 2014 (internet live stats, 2016). The increasing popularity of internet has attracted the
attention of communication scholars, to fathom its promising developments, uncertainties and
lurking dangers in the horizon of our cyber society.

Mass media is considered to be one of the important tools of opinion formation. Newspapers,
Radio and Television are considered as major ingredients of the Fourth Estate. Very soon,
Internet and Online newspapers also became popular media. Comparing to other media, the
growth of online newspapers is faster. When internet became a phenomenon beyond the
government and universities, electronic publishing exploded in newspapers, e-zines and current
information sites.

History Of Internet :-

The net is considered to be a product of the cold war, it was built by the USA military to protect
national security in the face of nuclear attack. The Advanced Research Project Agency(ARPA) was
a new Department started within the US Department of Defence and the ARPANET succeeded in
creating the first effective long distance computer network.

1962: The RAND Corporation, USA, begins research into robust, distributed communication
networks for military command and control.

1969: ARPANET connects first four universities in the US.

1972: The Inter Networking Working Group becomes the first of several standard- setting entities
to govern the growing network.
1973: The ARPANET goes International with connections to University College in London,
England, and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway.

1974: The first commercial version of ARPANET, The Telenet opened.

1983: TC/IP becomes the Universal language of the Internet.

1984: William Gibson coins the term "Cyberspace "in his novel "Neuromancer"

1985: The World Wide Web is born.

In the United States, delivery of news and other information to people with computers in their
homes dates to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a handful of media companies went public
with their experiments in something called ‘videotex’. Videotex involved sending information
from a central computer to an individual terminal over telephone lines, and the key advantages
over print that its supporters suggested will sound familiar: speed, selectivity, the ability to
personalise information and the extent of available data. Although similar systems in Europe
were backed by national governments, notably departments providing mail and telephone
services, those in the United States were developed by corporations. About a dozen US
newspapers also explored electronic transmission through a service called CompuServe.

The available technology in the 1980s however was not quite up to the task that these pioneers
envisioned. Although the Internet existed as a civilian technology, having split from its military
origins in 1983, it was still a cumbersome text-based system used primarily by scientists and
researchers and unknown to almost everyone else. Moreover, effective revenue models were
elusive for videotext products’ commercial backers, whose proprietary stand-alone networks
were not connected to the fledgling Internet. By the end of the decade, many of the early services
had been abandoned and others had morphed into something quite different, generally with few
if any ties to existing news organizations.

There was an invention of a logical system for connecting something that existed in one place on
the network to a different thing in a different place. In the late 1980s, Tim Berners Lee, working
in a particle physics lab in CERN, Switzerland, developed three technical keystones for sharing
information in something he dubbed the World Wide Web. There was a language for encoding
documents (HTML), a system for linking one document to another (http, a protocol for
exchanging data among computers) and a document-naming system (URL, or Universal Resource
Locator) stemming from the World Wide Web.

In India, internet was introduced in 1991 by the Department of Electronics through

the Educational and Research Network (ERNET). It was funded by United Nation Development
Programme. On August 15, 1995, Internet was offered to private individuals and organizations
by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited and in 1999 it was liberalized. Since then it has grown, now
even villages which have telephone accessibility are armed with internet. Until the early 1990s
the internet was simply a network of computers used to transmit government data. With the
advent of World Wide Web and Online Subscription Service Providers, internet traffic became an
important medium of communication.

Internet as a Mass Medium

If anything is dynamic in today’s world, it is the concept and process of communication. Every
aspect of it including its channels keeps evolving by the year. Not too long ago many
communication scholars had problem accepting the Internet as an emerging mass
communication medium. But a critical scrutiny of the features of the classical mass
communication media such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines shows the Internet
exhibiting the same qualities. Such analysis puts the Internet on an equal platform with the old
mass media if not on a higher position. A look at these attributes will drive home the point.

i. Reach: A medium is said to have a good reach or coverage if it has the ability to expose a
large number of people to a given mass media message within a given period. Frequencies
restrict the reach of radio and television media to a limited region or territory (except if
they are enabled by the Internet boundless waves or satellite orbits). The circulation of
print newspapers and magazines depend on manual distribution. This is a strong limitation
as newspapers from Nigeria, for example, cannot reach people in even the neighbouring
countries through such vehicle –assisted distribution system. But when enhanced on the
Internet, the online version has no boundaries. An electronic newspaper can be accessed
from any part of the world where there is an Internet network.

The Internet, on the other hand, has the potential to reach everyone hooked up to an
Internet- enabled system. Its services or network can be received anywhere without any
restriction through any of the Internet Service Providers (ISP). That some people do not
have computers or Internet connection is not a weakness of the medium, after all, some
people too cannot afford TV sets and therefore cannot receive TV signals. So the Internet
has the capacity to reach a large audience and even a larger audience than some
conventional mass media especially print newspapers and magazines. In fact, the Internet
is not only a mass medium but is also a global medium with a potential to reach everyone
on the globe. With an audience of some 800 million people worldwide, the Internet is also
the only true global medium, providing information and commerce opportunities that are
immediately accessible around the world. Scholars argue that "by inventing the WWW, Tim
Berners Lee, the British physicist, created the software that allows the Internet to work as
a medium of mass communication" .
ii. Simultaneity of Reception: Another feature of the traditional mass media is
simultaneity, which is the ability of the medium to transmit the message to audience
members at the same time or nearly the same time. Hanson (2005) underlined that "mass
communication messages are transmitted rapidly to the receivers. Audience members can
receive the message simultaneously, as they would in the case of a radio broadcast; at
similar though not identical times, as in the case of a newspaper or magazine; and
occasionally over an extended period, as in the case of CD, movie or video ".

Perhaps, the greatest weakness of the Internet as a mass communication channel lies in its
poor capacity to be accessed simultaneously by the mass audience. Yet, apart from radio
and television that broadcast transient messages simultaneously to the receivers, all other
mass media are to some degree equally have this deficiency. Newspapers, magazines,
billboards, books and the Internet cannot be accessed at the same time. Nevertheless,
their permanent nature as opposed to the transient nature of radio and TV messages
counters this weakness since people can access them even moments after they are
transmitted.

In itself, the Internet has the potential to reach everyone who is connected at the same
second just as radio and TV signals can be received at once by all who tune in to the same
channel. However, in reality, the possibility of many being hooked up online all at the same
time, and surfing through the same website is very slim. Nevertheless, not even radio, TV
and much less newspapers and magazines can hope to achieve simultaneity of reception
especially with our contemporary multi-channel phenomenon.

iii. Anonymity: A mass communication channel allows the sender to reach a large,
heterogeneous and anonymous audience. Because of the number involved, the audience
is a mixed group and the sender cannot personally know most of them. The producers of a
webcast, a webzine, an on-line newspaper or a popular corporate website cannot know
the individual audience members who would visit their sites. The audience members on
their part may also not know the sender of such online messages or information.

iv. Heterogeneity of Audience: If a medium of mass communication must reach a

heterogeneous and spatially dispersed audience, then no other medium does it better than
the Internet. The Internet audience are a thoroughly mixed group in sex, age, location,
status, class, race and culture. They can be spatially dispersed both in reality and in the
virtual world.

v. Dual Outreach: In fact, the Internet has an added advantage since it can be adapted for
both a narrow and mass reach depending on the users need. It has the potential for both
global marketing and narrowcasting to a specialized or segmented audience. What is more,
in the same manner that radio and TV can switch from one language to the other, the
 Internet can be accessed in most popular languages spoken in different parts of the world.
So not even language is a barrier here unlike for books, newspapers, magazines and
billboards that are limited by language. Its barrier though is technological illiteracy barrier,
because one must have some level of computer proficiency before he can access the
Internet. Accessibility too can limit the Internet and this too will soon be in the past as
Internet threatens to become cheaper and more easily accessible.

The Internet as a Unique Mass Medium

The next task in this work which is the major contribution of this paper is to x-ray ways in which
the Internet is distinct from other mass media in order to understand why this paper qualifies it
as the medium of all mass media. The Internet’s uniqueness extends also to alter some old
definitions of mass communication and demands a revisit of some old concepts of mass
communication.

1. Ability to Enhance the Performance of Other Media: A major edge or distinctiveness of

the Internet over the old or existing mass media lies in its ability to enhance the
performance of the other media. In fact, it can be safely said that the Internet has become
an indispensable part of radio, television, newspaper and magazine’s effective and
successful existence. The old mass media have continued to enhance their relevance by
hooking up to the Internet. In a very short time, it will be inconceivable to think of any
media outfit that can survive without supporting itself with an online version of its
productions. Therefore, the Internet can aptly be called not just a mass medium but also
the medium of the mass media because it is also a channel through which the other media
enhance their relevance or overcome their own limitations of frequencies, circulation or
transiency. Through the Internet medium, the contents of the other media: radio, TV,
books, magazines, and newspapers are relayed to a wider audience.

2. Flexibility of Usage: What is more, the Internet has the potential to function as radio,
television, newspaper or magazine depending on the user’s need. No other known mass
medium has this unique ability of functioning as a different medium in different
circumstances. The user therefore decides what medium to make of the Internet. Radio
can never be used as a television medium, neither can newspaper ever become radio or
serve the purpose of a magazine. But the Internet can swap its nature by a single mouse
click. The thing that makes computer based communication so powerful is that it includes
virtually every level of communication, from the interpersonal communication of e-mail
and instant messaging to the mass communication of the World Wide Web.
3. Ability to Combine Features of Other Media: As a result of this flexibility nature, it
combines all the strengths of the old mass media such as visual ability of TV and the print
media; motion picture potential of TV and film, sound ability of radio, TV and film, retrieval
and permanent nature of books and the print media.

4. Ability to Empower Audience as Active Users: Before the advent of the Internet,
receivers were merely seen as audience members whose contribution to the
communication process was limited to passively absorbing whatever the senders had to
offer. Their choice was very limited beyond tuning off from the channel or media content.
With the invention of cable and its consequent many channels availability, the audience
had greater choices to make concerning what media content to consume and when. The
arrival of the remote control empowered them more since they would not even need to
get up from their seats to change to any station. But the control was indeed a remote one.

However, when the Internet came on board, they ceased to be merely a passive audience
on the consumption lane but they quickly transformed to active users who select not only
what medium to use, but which of its many contents to consume. A television sports fan
who wants to watch the news on a television channel is kept hostage as a typical audience
member from the beginning of the news cast to the end before he is satisfied. On the
Internet he quickly goes to the sports link thus controlling the communication process and
using the media as he wants.

5. A Medium for Two-Way Communication: The Internet users are equally engaged
actively in the production aspect of the communication process. They respond to messages
and also create their own messages. It is indeed a mass medium with a difference which
offers both the sender and the receiver equal opportunities in the communication process;
and both are simply referred to as users. Internet became a full-fledged mass
communication network in the 1990s, although its beginnings dates back to 1969. Rather
than simply making it easier for individuals and organizations to send messages to a mass
audience, the new computer networks are designed for two-way communication.
Audience members who were once passive receivers could now send messages back to the
original senders thus becoming message providers themselves. Thus there is no fixed
status of sender or receiver in this new communication setting. This interchangeability of
sender – receiver roles is not a unique feature of the Internet. A newspaper reader who
sends a letter to the editor may have become also a sender but the Internet’s potential for
instantaneous feedback is perhaps what makes it stand out in this ability.

6. The Internet Challenges Conventional Concepts of Mass Communication: The Internet

has also challenged the conventional understanding of the mass communication sender as
always an organized, complex and expensive system. Today mass communication on the
 Internet is not necessarily the product of a large, complex and sophisticated organization.
Even a single individual can use the Internet to generate and sustain communication with
a very large and mixed (mass) group. Neither must mass communication be an expensive
or capital-intensive- investment as that of setting a broadcast station or floating a
newspaper. All one needs for Internet mass communication may be a computer and an
Internet modem.

The WWW brings the Internet into the realm of mass communication and reverses the
traditional pattern of one-to-many communication. Web sites offer everybody the chance
to become mass communicators, mass communication is never guaranteed, but the
potential is there. The affordability of this channel can make anybody an electronic
publisher with access to a potential audience of millions, thus creating a whole new type
of mass communicator.

7. The Internet has a Worldwide Audience: With development and time, the Internet
might even dare to become the primary mass medium as ubiquitous as every man’s radio.
The Internet has become a dominant infrastructure in the modern society. Like many
communication technologies, Internet started rather upscale, and is now broadening to
middle – and lower income consumers with the advent of more affordable computers.
Wireless technology will spread the application even further and faster to poor countries
that cannot afford the infrastructure needed for wired connections.

Hypertextuality
Hypertext, or ‘links’ are a common feature of new media, which allows users more freedom of
choice over how they navigate the different sources of information available to them.

In more technical terms, links in web sites offer non-sequential connections between all kinds of
data facilitated by the computer. Optimists tend to see this feature as allowing for more
individualised lifestyle choices, giving users the chance to act more independently, and to make
the most of the opportunities new media markets make available to them.

The prefix ‘hyper’ is derived from a Greek word which has the meaning of ‘above, beyond, or
outside’. Hence hypertext has come to describe a text which provides a network of links to other
texts that are ‘outside, above, and beyond’ itself. It can be defined as a work which is made up
from discrete units of material in which each one carries a number of pathways to other units.

The work is a web of connection which the user explores using the navigational aids of the
interface design. Each discrete ‘node’ in the web has a number of entrances and exits or links.
Common, hypertext media are called non-linear media. Implications are that (a) one need not
read documents in a prescribed order; (b) authors, styles and permissible rules of content may
vary as one reads linked documents; (c) responsibility and control is diffused - as is ownership of
the resulting content; (d) form and structure is easily changed, composed on demand for
individuals

Interactivity
‘Old media’ tended to be very much a ‘one way’ affair, with audiences on the receiving end of
broadcasts, for the most part able to do little else that just passively watch media content. New
Media however is much more of a two way affair and it allows consumers and users to get more
involved. It is much more of a two way form of communication than old media. Increased
interactivity can be seen in simple acts such as liking a Facebook post or commenting on news
piece or blog. However some users get much more involved and create their own blogs and
videos and actively upload their own content as ‘prosumers’. New Media seem to have fostered
a more participatory culture, with more people involved and the roles between consumer and
producer of media content becoming ever more blurred!

The Internet And Culture

The Internet And Culture. Culture has significantly benefitted from the invention and use of
the web. Culture is defined as shared behaviours, ideas, and artifacts that create a way of life
passed from one generation to another. Recognizing the impact that the internet has on society
and culture is very important. It is clear that the Internet influences culture. Its effects can even
be considered as a culture of its own. If we learn the results, we can help make the internet more
beneficial by focusing on the accuracy of information and by realizing its limitations.
We can also help secure cultural differences by learning the importance of culture and developing
new ways to keep cultural uniqueness despite the influences of the internet.
The Internet And Culture. Some of these consequences may take many years to take effect fully.
However, many of these changes are now evident in society. The Internet significantly affects the
way people live. Much has changed because of the technology. For instance, people have
changed their communication topics, frequencies, and habits as a result of the availability and
accessibility of online communication tools.
The development of information and communication technologies and the wide-ranging effects
of globalization are changing what we are how we live, interact and learn, and redefining the idea
of cultural identity. The concepts of space, time, and distance are losing their conventional
meanings. Unfortunately, these benefits can also be viewed as its weaknesses. Cultural
globalization is here, and a global movement of cultural processes and initiatives is underway.
Most who argue that the internet is harming culture, believe the open nature of the web allows
for any and every information to reach anyone anywhere. Be it kids or adults who blindly copy
what they see or read about and emulate or practice themselves, irrelevant of the environment
they find themselves. Against those doomsayers who warn that the Internet is harming culture,
We are radically optimistic. The Internet is bringing culture closer to more people, making it more
easily and quickly accessible; it is also nurturing the rise of new forms of expression for art and
the spread of knowledge. Some would say, in fact, that the Internet is not just a technology, but
a cultural artifact in its right.
All this is not to say that the internet has been positive or that it holds no issues. On the contrary,
we shouldn’t let that blind us to the negative impact the internet is having on our culture, and
there is little we can do to counteract the damage the internet is inflicting on our society without
acknowledging that there is a problem in the first place. There is a problem. But the benefits far
outweigh the negatives. We as a people need to realize that the internet will continue to change
our cultures in many ways with future advances and increasing usage. It is essential to study the
effects it produces so we can learn how to limit the adverse effects and boost the benefits. By
studying these effects, we can ensure that the future holds great possibilities.

Convergence

Online platforms have a greater advantage over other media with its multimedia facilities.
Whenever stories are supported by cartoons, moving pictures, sound and music, it is called
multimedia. The word Convergence means "come towards each other and meet at a point". So
media convergence is, computer and telecommunication technologies used in the multimedia
systems for the transfer and exchange of information, data, graphics and sound.

E.g. watch video and films on the computer, read a newspaper on the net

Technologically rich societies have entered the digital age, and media industries are grappling
with new opportunities – and threats – afforded by what is called “convergence”. Media people
tend to get very excited about convergence, because it holds so much promise. The melding
together of different media, incorporating new personalized services is both impressive and
overwhelming.

Blogs
A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for
general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a
single page in reverse-chronological order. Blogs generally represent the personality of the
author or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief
philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites
the author favours, especially those that support a point being made on a post.

Blogs represent a significant shift in information flow, where information flows from many to
many seamlessly. It is a serious challenge to traditional journalism. Blogs do not have
gatekeepers, so they are raw, honest, immediate passionate, opinionated and strike an
emotional chord. At times they may not be credible as there are no gatekeepers. It is professional
journalism versus amateur journalism. Media has realised the growing power of blogs. So news
websites nowadays encourage blogging by their employees on their site. Many celebrities too
have their own blogs.

Blogs are on varied topics. They are easy to start but difficult to sustain. Those who wish to start
a blog will have higher cyber space without payments and start to use the space. Add text,
colours, paintings, photos, audio, visual, animation, graphics and more. Publish advertisements,
persuasive pieces, and campaign materials; make money by business promotion, public relation
activity, reviews etc. The owner of the blog decides the content and design. Seamless freedom is
the major attraction of blogs. This is a global space. Any person around the world with internet
accessibility can open the page and read. Blogs offer such an international opportunity to interact
with the real faceless community. Though there is an international accepted code of ethics in
journalism, all laws and regulations regarding publications in one country are applicable for a
blog.

The advantages of blogs are creative freedom, instantaneity, interactivity, lack of marketing
constraints. The key features of a blog includes content area, archives, comments, feeds, plug
ins, widgets, themes, templates, trackbacks, pingbacks.

The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs
exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a
social networking service in which everyday authors can publish their opinions. Blogs can follow
other blogs and repost portions of original posts or link out to original sources that prompted a
post, such as news articles or product releases. Although bloggers can become influential and
even profit from their posts, blogs are often maintained out of a desire to share thoughts with
like-minded people rather than profit.

The blogosphere has become an invaluable source for citizen journalism – that is, real-time
reporting about events and conditions in local areas that large news agencies do not or cannot
cover. Blogosphere is a term some writers have used to describe the grassroots and interactive
journalism made possible by participants in blogs (logs or journals maintained on the Internet)
and the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and traditional journalists.

Example blog: The One Rule for Life by Mark Manson

Search Engines
The better way to locate specific information is to use a search engine. It is a web tool that helps
to find specific sites on the internet. These are searchable indexes running on powerful
computers that look up information, using key words. When enter a word or phrase to look up,
the search engine locates any document containing the key words. The listed documents are
called hits. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as
search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and
other types of files. When a user enters a query into a search engine (typically by using keywords),
the engine examines its index and provides a listing of best-matching web pages according to its
criteria, usually with a short summary containing the document's title and sometimes parts of
the text. The index is built from the information stored with the data and the method by which
the information is indexed

E.g. Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo

Social Medias
Social media are computer-mediated tools that allow people to exchange information, ideas, and
pictures/videos in

media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms
through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated
content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between
businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals. These changes are the focus of the
emerging field of techno self studies. Social media differ from traditional or industrial media in
many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy and permanence. Social
media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input,
interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums,
micro blogging, social networking , social bookmarking, and wikis are among the different types
of social media.
Prominent examples of social media:

•Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create
profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and
colleagues. According to statistics from the Nielsen Group, Internet users within the United States
spend more time on Face book than any other website.

•Twitter is a free micro blogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts
called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other users' tweets by using
multiple platforms and devices.

•WhatsApp, a mobile messaging App is very popular today. According to latest figures, nearly
one in seven people use Whatsapp each month to stay in touch.

•Wikipedia is a free, open content online encyclopaedia created through the collaborative effort
of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an
article for publication; registration is not

required to edit articles.

•LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal
of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they
know and trust professionally.

•Reddit is a social news website and forum where stories are socially curate and promoted by
site members. The site is composed of hundreds of sub-communities, known as "subreddits."
Each subreddit has a specific topic such as technology, politics or music. Reddit site members,
also known as, "redditors," submit content which is then voted upon by other members. The goal
is to send well-regarded

stories to the top of the site's main thread page.

•Pinterest is a social curation website for sharing and categorizing images found online. Pinterest
requires brief descriptions but the main focus of the site is visual. Clicking on an image will take
one to the original source, so, for example, if a registered user click on a picture of a pair of shoes,
he/she might be taken to a site where he/she can purchase them. An image of blueberry
pancakes might take you to the recipe; a picture of a whimsical birdhouse might take you to the
instructions.

Applications that have developed within and around these platforms, websites, and tools are
endless in number and functionality, but all make online sharing and searching easier in some
fashion, regardless of their niche. As nearly every type of business has an association in the non-
digital world, so too does the internet offer an endless number of niche social communities where
members can gather around a common topic. Topics both general and specific now have living
homes on the internet; anything from colon and digestive health to security and compliance can
and do have active social media communities.

News Portal
News Portal is an online communication medium for internet users which are read all over the
world. The news portal development allows to publish publications, press releases, columns,
articles, blogs and other news related content.
News portal is one of the ways to reach the current information and technology news and market
trends. Now a day's people use online news portal or website to know the latest updates and
news across the globe. It is flexible to read and get the latest news everywhere that you want via
online news portal.

e-governance
Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of information and communication
technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication
transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems between government to citizen (G2C),
government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), government-to-employees
(G2E) as well as back-office processes and interactions within the entire government
framework. Through e-governance, government services are made available to citizens in a
convenient, efficient, and transparent manner. The three main target groups that can be
distinguished in governance concepts are government, citizens, and businesses/interest groups.
In e-governance, there are no distinct boundaries.

Digital divide

Digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access
to modern information and communications technology, and those that don't or have restricted
access. This technology can include the telephone, television, personal computers and
the Internet.
Well before the late 20th century, digital divide referred chiefly to the division between those
with and without telephone access; after the late 1990s the term began to be used mainly to
describe the split between those with and without Internet access, particularly broadband.

The digital divide typically exists between those in cities and those in rural areas; between the
educated and the uneducated; between socioeconomic groups; and, globally, between the more
and less industrially developed nations. Even among populations with some access to technology,
the digital divide can be evident in the form of lower-performance computers, lower-
speed wireless connections, lower-priced connections such as dial-up, and limited access to
subscription-based content.

The reality of a separate-access marketplace is problematic because of the rise of services such
as video on demand, video conferencing and virtual classrooms, which require access to high-
speed, high-quality connections that those on the less-served side of the digital divide cannot
access and/or afford. And while adoption of smartphones is growing, even among lower-income
and minority groups, the rising costs of data plans and the difficulty of performing tasks and
transactions on smartphones continue to inhibit the closing of the gap.

According to recent studies and reports, the digital divide is still very much a reality today. A June
2013 U.S. White House broadband report, for example, showed that only 71% of American
homes have adopted broadband, a figure lower than in other countries with comparable gross
domestic product.

Proponents for closing the digital divide include those who argue it would improve literacy,
democracy, social mobility, economic equality and economic growth.