Contextualizing connectivity: how internet connection type and parental factors influence technology use among lower-income children

an article by Vikki S. Katz and Katherine Ognyanova (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA) and Meghan B. Moran (Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

This project links research on digital inequality, which focuses on connection quality and its outcomes for under-connected individuals, and parental mediation, which focuses on the influence of parents on children’s technology experiences.

We examine the internet connection type used by families, the technology experiences of lower-income parents, and their perceptions of opportunities that technology use offers their children. We then determine how these factors influence the frequency and scope of their school-age children’s technology use.

Findings show that contextualizing children’s connectivity to account for infrastructural, socio-demographic, and relational influences provides new insights into the technology experiences of lower-income children. One set of findings suggests that direct benefit from increased connectivity is most evident for lower-income parents – those with the lowest household incomes, lowest levels of education, and whose dominant language is not English.

These effects remain after controlling for other socio-demographic factors. The second set of results shows that greater connectivity increases how frequently both children and parents use the internet, but is associated only with a greater scope of internet activities for parents.

Parents’ online activity scope is important for their children’s online experiences, directly predicting the scope of their online activities. High-scope parents were also significantly more likely to see digital opportunities in their children’s internet use, which in turn also predicted more frequent and broader internet use by their children. We conclude by considering the practical implications of these findings for digital equity initiatives targeting lower-income families.

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Towards a theory of digital media

an article by Ralph Schroeder (University of Oxford, UK) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 21 Issue 3 (2018)

Abstract

This article puts forward a theory of the role of digital media in social change. It begins by criticizing three theories that currently dominate our understanding of digital media and of media generally:

• network theory,
• mediatization theory and
• actor-network theory.

It also identifies a gap in current communication theory, namely, that digital media mostly do not fit the divide into mass and interpersonal communication.

A further problem is that insufficient attention is given to the difference between political communication and popular culture or everyday life.

The article develops an alternative, focusing on four countries that provide a range of relationships between media and society; the U.S., Sweden, India and China. In all four countries, despite their differences, digital media, in contrast to traditional broadcast and interpersonal media, have led to a more differentiated media landscape.

Greater complexity in political communication nevertheless runs up against the continuing dominance of elite agenda-setting.

In terms of popular culture, all four countries have experienced a proliferation of media offerings and greater tetheredness between people. Hence, new divides are emerging between more active and variegated as against more passive and restricted media uses.

The article concludes with implications of digital media for understanding media generally: with new digital media, there is now a need to rethink media theory in terms of fundamental debates about how media transform or preserve the social order.

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