w10:How to deduce the digital divide? |LiuXinlei

The opposite view of the hypothesis of knowledge gap is the ceiling effect, which believes that the individual's pursuit of specific knowledge is not endless. After reaching a certain upper limit, the increase in knowledge will slow down or even stop. Putting it into analysis in today’s society, I think that people with high socioeconomic status can acquire knowledge faster, which means that this “upper limit” has also come earlier. Compared with people with low economic status, although the increase in knowledge is slower, they can Catch up with people of high economic status on the "cap". Then this hypothesis means that the result of mass communication activities is not to increase the digital divide of society, but to decrease it.

I personally think this hypothesis is very feasible, because in today's open society, the source of information can determine the upper limit, and what mass communication conveys is not esoteric knowledge but "ordinary" knowledge within a certain range. It should be admitted that the upper limit exists in the process of individual pursuit of specific knowledge, but this upper limit does not appear to be so obvious from the perspective of knowledge dissemination as a whole.

In addition, I found that most of the digital divide is defined as the various classes of society, but in the 2016 UN column on digital divide, the focus is on gender. ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao proposed to encourage more women and young women to join the information and communication technology industry, and regarded digital divide as a more urgent issue in the world today. Then it proves that digital divide is not only regarded as an extension of economic status inequality, but also includes more human issues that have emerged in the world society waiting to be resolved. In the homes of the feminist movement in Asian countries, in today's highly open information society, what women as a vulnerable group need is more "right to speak." They define the "right to speak" as the right to freely use information media to express their emotions. From solving the gap caused by gender inequality, we can extend to how to solve the problem of digital divide. All classes have equal access to high-quality free education, and provide help for participating in the construction of a transparent social system, rather than outsiders in the development of this information society. At the same time, laws and services are needed. This is the key to reducing digital divide. Basic social services and measures to promote the use of these services are important to ensure that all classes can participate in the use of digital media. Of course, the most important part is the accessibility, which can make all of this the last threshold to reduce the digital divide, which will help the wider use of digital services, regardless of gender, age, and specific regions.