Digital Inclusion Without Social Inclusion

From the abstract:


"This pilot study examined how homeless people in central Scotland integrate and appropriate mobile phones and the Internet into their everyday lives, and the meanings these information and communication technologies (ICTs) come to hold for them. It was found that ‘digital inclusion’ does not necessarily lead to ‘social inclusion’ into mainstream society, since homeless individuals tend to use ICTs in ways that reinforce the patterns and practices of their subculture. There is no standard way of making use of technologies. Many homeless people thereby remain socially excluded in numerous ways despite their somewhat regular use of ICTs. It also emerged that mobile uptake can actually be more ‘inclusive’ than Internet uptake.'


The study examines the relationship between the concepts of digital inclusion and social inclusion. It analyses data gathered through interviewing 16 men and women in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, including five service agency workers, ten homeless and ex-homeless individuals, and one ex-homeless woman who also worked as an outreach worker. "The interpretation of findings was informed by a social construction of technology perspective, which recognizes that technologies are socially constructed by the broader social, political, economic and cultural context....From the social constructivist perspective stems a social shaping of technology perspective, which holds that technologies profoundly influence human activities; and humans, in turn, influence how technologies develop and come to be used."


By way of examples of situations of digital inclusion accompanied by social exclusion, the author cites the fact that homeless people can use the internet to find housing listings, yet, remain vulnerable to homelessness due to other socio-cultural, economic, or psychological factors. ICT - both the internet and mobile telephones - can facilitate contact and connectedness within and outside the homeless subculture, but the author states that this may have positive and negative consequences, depending on the use of access to networks. Connection to social networks may mean access to criminal activity (the author uses drug networks as an example), connection to social service support networks (though increased use of mobile phones can decrease critical face-to-face time with social workers), and/or connection to family and friends. Difficulties for digital inclusion cited by the author include keeping possession of a mobile phone - preventing individuals from trading, selling, losing them, or having them stolen, and keeping them functional; and accessing an email account so sporadically that passwords are regularly forgotten - making it difficult for homeless people to consistently rely on these technologies to provide them with a permanent address even in ‘cyberspace'.


The author concludes that ICT access may help homeless people at a certain point if there is also support towards a stable social and economic environment and the desire and motivation for change. "If we wish to eradicate the most glaring inequalities that prevail in modern society, therefore, we need to look farther than the provision of access to information and communication technologies and the skills to use them, and beyond the deterministic view that technology will have only positive benefits on the path to mainstream participation. New digital technologies are instead a new, complicating factor that must be taken into account in the overall process of helping disadvantaged individuals to change their lives for the better."