The cultural divide behind the digital divide
A new international collection, Digital Inequality: Studies in Cultural Communication, makes a powerful point: access to technology is only the beginning. Edited by Anna Gladkova, Elena Vartanova and Shi-xu, the book gathers researchers from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific to explore how communities experience digital life in their own social and cultural settings. Together they show that digital inequality is not just about who has access but about whose worlds, languages and knowledge systems shape the internet itself.
Earlier research has described three pillars of the digital divide: access to devices and connection, the skills and confidence to use them and the benefits gained. This volume widens that lens to include algorithmic bias and what the editors call epistemic divides, meaning differences in whose knowledge systems are visible or valued online.
Not to brag, but I thought I had a reasonable grasp of the digital equity landscape but one chapter in particular offered up a brand new framing. It examines e-labour in Singapore, where ride-share and delivery apps open the door to new working opportunities for delivery drivers. However, these new roles are deepening workers' dependence on seemingly faceless platforms that control their data, ratings and pay.
Chapter authors, Kuansong Victor Zhuang and Gerard Goggin tell the story of Mohammed Ali, a GrabFood delivery rider who suffered horrific brain trauma after a crash in 2021. His family turned to Facebook for financial help and Singaporeans quickly crowdfunded his medical care. This reveals how this type of e-labour can offer opportunity yet shift risk and responsibility onto workers and the public. Nine out of ten riders report accidents or know someone who has, but neither the companies nor the state release data.
Zhuang and Goggin go on to analyse a GrabFood advertisement that turns hardship into brand virtue, presenting a son’s long hours to support his ill mother as evidence of the platform’s “doing good” mission. The authors argue that stories like these humanise the company while obscuring precarity. Both examples show how Singapore’s digital economy transforms vulnerability into virtue and corporate benevolence into a substitute for fair labour rights.
Throughout the collection, culture is treated as both context and cause of inequality. Digital systems carry the assumptions of the societies that build them. Algorithms, languages and design choices often reflect dominant norms, leaving smaller or non-dominant groups unseen. This is the cultural divide behind the digital divide.
On dominant bias, another interesting chapter looks at digital inequality among Zimbabwe’s ethnic minorities, specifically the Shangaan and Tonga communities. Authors Lungile Tshuma and Trust Matsilele reveal how cultural, geographic and political exclusion have left these groups disconnected from the digital world. While internet penetration across Zimbabwe has risen, half the population remains offline, and for the Shangaan and Tonga, barriers like poor infrastructure, unreliable electricity, under-resourced schools and instruction in non-native languages make participation nearly impossible.
Through interviews with community leaders, the authors show how government neglect, rooted in tribal hierarchies and historical marginalisation, translates into digital exclusion. Budget consultations and vital public forums are now held online in Zimbabwe, yet many in these districts have never seen a computer. Tshuma and Matsilele argue that digital inequality is not a neutral technical issue but a reflection of whose voices are valued in national life. Their work reframes connectivity as a question of citizenship and recognition, reminding us that digital equity demands inclusion in the story of the nation itself.
Māori and Pasifika researchers, alongside community advocates, have long reminded us that digital inclusion is not just about expanding coverage or providing cheaper laptops to tamariki. It must also consider whose knowledge, stories and values are reflected online, and who feels welcome in those spaces. Across the motu, thinkers are extending the familiar MASTS pillars - motivation, access, skills, trust and safety — by adding identity, creating what some call iMASTS. This approach centres belonging, cultural expression and tino rangatiratanga as essential to true digital equity, connecting Aotearoa’s mahi to a wider global movement for digital justice.
Digital Inequality: Studies in Cultural Communication is freely available through Routledge’s open-access platform.
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