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Ethnographic Interviews on the Digital Divide

Employing narrative analysis of ethnographic interviews with persons from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and racial/ethnic backgrounds, this article examines the discursive structure of the digital divide debate as it is articulated among contemporary online users and non-users in the United States. The article argues that the discourse of individualism serves as a filter that shapes and distorts all private and public conversations about the digital divide and thus limits public debate on the subject. Some challenges to the dominance of individualism emerge when people discuss the digital divide in relation to the specific, lived situations of economic disadvantage. Yet we conclude that the potential political power of this critique is muted as it echoes rather than challenges the contradictions inherent to the promise of the digital era that are found at the heart of both corporate advertising and current social policies.