The following was a project made for one of my graduate studies courses in the winter of 2021 in collaboration with Leslie Zijun Rao (M.A.). The project consists of a paper and a poster. The paper can be found here. The poster can be seen as a pdf here and was presented at the Carleton University Institute for Data Science Data Day 7.0 (2021). The introduction of the paper can be seen below:
Introduction
The digital divide is a multidimensional concept that embeds complicated social dynamics. It often refers to the Internet “haves” and the “have-nots,” which demonstrates the unequal access to knowledge and opportunities through disproportionate access to information and communication technologies. Various factors can contribute to the digital discrepancies, such as lacking broadband infrastructures to cover the region, the shortage of good quality network services, or lacking proper digital devices to access Internet services.
The Government of Canada has devised a series of programs to reduce the digital divide, including expanding internet infrastructures and increasing the affordability of internet services. However, the problem still remains unsolved in various areas. Inaccessibility issues are frequently being reported by Canadians across the country, while the situation is often unmonitored, as the digital divide and many of its related factors are not officially recorded. The disparity between rural and urban areas is the most commonly recognized trait of Canada’s digital divide. However, the further details beyond this dichotomous scope are not often discussed in the public, because the detailed information and data are generally absent from the public sphere.
Our project is an attempt to map and analyze the digital divide in Canada by using the available data in the public, and to examine the issues that prevent us (as well as the public in general) from obtaining an accurate assessment of digital divide. Correspondingly, this project is conducted based on two central research questions:
- How to map the digital divide in Canada and what information about the digital divide can be derived from the analysis?
- What are the barriers that prevent us from obtaining an accurate assessment of digital divide in Canada?
The following report will be arranged into five sections: the first section is a literature review of the multidimensional concept of the digital divide; the second is the methodology we adopted to assess the digital divide in Canada; the third is the illustration of our attempts to map the digital divide, as well as the data results derived from the data analysis; the fourth is the observation and analysis of the mapping experiment, in which we reflect on the process, further discuss why the data analysis did not render sufficient new knowledge about digital divide, and identify the barriers that prevented us from gaining a more accurate assessment of the digital divide; lastly, we will conclude with a series of recommendations for the improvement of the public knowledge about the digital divide in Canada.
Due to the limited semester time frame, this project could potentially miss dataset resources and data processing tactics that might be more optimal for gaining better data results from the data mapping analysis experiment. With the scope that we had conducted the mapping experiment, our report attempts to reveal the lack of easy access to usable and reliable datasets related to the digital divide in Canada, which is a major barrier that fundamentally prevented us—as the public—from having more detailed understanding of the digital divide.
Full Paper and Accompanying Poster
The rest of the paper (including figures and references) can be found here. The accompanying poster can be found here.