Since social networking removes actual face to face interaction, individuals tend to feel more open to sharing personal information and details about their life in the cyber world than in the real world. For people with mental disabilities, especially children, their everyday social interactions are hindered because of their impairments. Essentially, they fear social rejection more so than a mentally and physically able bodied child. With the ability to hide behind a profile picture and not having so witness other reactions to their social network profiles, disabled individuals can utilize social media and networking sites to bridge the gap between themselves and other able bodied individuals. They can experience interactions with their peers that they may have been afraid to experience before. In a way, social networking sites can be considered a form of speech therapy if you will. Rather than sitting in a speech and language lab or lying on a psychologists couch, these disabled children who have access to the digital world and are instructed on how to use it can interact and build relationships as if they were living without any sort of disability.
In my first hyper-essay, I will explore the topic new to me: the digital divide between disabled and enabled as well as inquire about solutions to narrow the gap. In class we talked a lot about the digital divide between privileged and oppressed. This discussion led us to all sorts of oppression and minority groups both ethnically and socially such as Native Americans living on reservations, public school students in poor areas, to any sort of minority group being represented in the media. My goal for this hyper-essay is to delve deer into the lack of accessibility to media, more specifically social media for the disabled. Before we can explore this topic further together we must first identify an important stigma that comes we being disabled or impaired. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, disability is a condition that damages or limits a person's physical or mental abilities. The condition of being unable to do things the so-called normal way. On the other hand, impairment means to damage or make worse in some material respect. Society tends to believe that these to words are interchangeable when in fact they are not. Disability lends to a more negative connotation when used to refer to a social group. Like all negative connotations it empowers dominant groups. In this case it empowers the abled, but more specifically not the abled advocates for the disabled rather the abled who ignore struggles of the disabled. My goal is to bring light to this issue and moreover, empower this disabled as well as their abled-bodied advocates. Empowerment of the disabled and impaired can help integrate them back into society and essentially bridge this gap of digital divide. Since social networking removes actual face to face interaction, individuals tend to feel more open to sharing personal information and details about their life in the cyber world than in the real world. For people with mental disabilities, especially children, their everyday social interactions have been hindered because of their impairments. Essentially, they fear social rejection more so than a mentally and physically able bodied child. With the ability to hide behind a profile picture and not having so witness other reactions to their social network profiles, disabled individuals can utilize social media and networking sites to experience interactions with their peers that they may have been afraid to experience before. It is essential that we as abled-bodied individuals work to bridge this gap so that the disabled and impaired can interact and build relationships as if they were living without any sort of disability. As if they were not just another minority group being oppressed by the media. The digital divide among races and populations is an issue that has been building on for decades. The problems associated with lack of access began when society began segregating racial groups in schools, public, and everyday life. One of the major periods of segregation in our American culture was the period of time when Native Americans were forced to live on reserves as outlined in Race After the Internet's "Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure". Since indigenous tribes were relocated from their homeland to reserves they were deprived the various new and innovative technologies that came into existence such as personal computers, the internet, phones, smartphones, ipods, etc. Without these very technologies we would not be the thriving society that we are today in America. However, since tribes out onto reservations were deprived of these innovations, they could not thrive with us and began to fall behind in terms of successes and opportunities. Today the government is subsidizing the placement of computers and computer labs on reservations. However, just Jonathan Sterne mentioned in his article about computer literacy in education, simply providing access to computers is not enough. If we do not teach or demonstrate how to use computers and the internet at a level that the rest of society functions at how can we expect the access gap to narrow.
Another aspect of the issue is whether or not to allow new voices on the internet. One phrase that I found particularly interesting from this weeks reading comes from the chapter "New Voices on the Net? The Digital Journalism Divide and the Cost of Network Education" ....."In the information society, diverse communities' capacity to tell their own stories is especially critical" (246) The authors and contributors of this chapter go on to say that America has entered a world of illusion since Barrack Obama's election to the US presidency in 2008. That many citizens believe that America has entered into a "post-racial" era, when in fact this is not the case at all. Yes, we are not persecuting them, or keeping them out of schools, and higher education directly, but we are indirectly hindering them and their ability and opportunity to thrive by keeping minority communities and societies out of the media and the journalism world. Today, only about 15% the media, journalism, and news industry is composed of minorities. By not allowing minority populations to express their ideas via the internet and the innovative actions that are the 21st century how can we expect to narrow the digital divide. First, we must tackle computer literacy, and then we must allow these minority races and social classes to not only engage in technological forms of communication for education, but also to engage in a leisurely manner and therefore cultivating and expressing their thoughts and opinions. Jonathan Sterne’s chapter “The Computer Race Goes to Class” suggests that the gap between races online primarily begins with education. After tracing the history of computers, Stern came to the conclusion that earlier access to the digital world leads to greater success for individuals in the future. After having identified computer literacy as an essential ingredient to success in the 21st century, Stern acknowledges the lack of computers in certain school that exists in certain areas of the US, areas of a particular race. It is no lie that richer schools provide their students with greater access to the Internet and the cyber world. They have more money and can therefore enhance their schools. For these reason public schools are underprivileged districts, lack large quantities of computers and sometimes lack computers altogether. I completely agree that computer literacy requires more than simply access to the digital world. Schools cannot simply place a computer or two on their grounds and expect students to all of a sudden become not only computer literate but to become thriving individuals in the virtual and technological world. Advanced, moreover required, computer literacy can only be achieved when taught and studied. After all, as with all aspects of one’s life, practice makes perfect.
The fact that students of certain races do not have access to computers in large numbers or a computer literacy class directly leads to a digital divide between social classes. Some act or movement clearly needs to be made in order to bridge this gap between classes. With the growing presence of technology in the business sector, the demand for computers and computer literacy in each classroom increases. Simply donating a single or a few computers to disadvantaged schools does not narrow the digital divide as in Apple’s case. Even though the divide is still quite large, I am still proud that House of Representatives and Senate have made strong and substantial efforts to tighten it. It is important that classrooms do not inherit computers just because that model will not sell to consumers. Hewlett Packard’s efforts to no only provide computers to classrooms but also to train teachers is wonderful. All of these efforts demonstrate to me that the gap is not going unnoticed by those who have the power to change it. I found the end of Sterne’s chapter on the computer race particularly interesting. He states that the politics of race mold the Internet and digital world but not just because of the divide in access but also because of what is present in the digital world once individuals receive access. Politics of race mold the character of the Internet just as much the Internet shapes the politics of race. By this, I believe Sterne means that even though the digital divide is partially due to racial politics, racial politics also affect the academic journals, blogs and information that can be found online. |