A Study of the Second-Level Digital Divide in Rural Taiwan

• Main Authors: Hsien-Cheng Wang, 王憲正
• Other Authors: Chih-PingChen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/05214612494894612563

碩士 === 元智大學 === 資訊傳播學系 === 100 === Over the past two decades, scholars and studies had suggested “First-Level Digital Divide” has played an important role. Meanwhile, digital divide has been narrowly defined as the gap between the information rich and the information poor on Internet access. Such dichotomous classification provided a poor road map for technology use. In fact, studies have indicated that, as the material access divide lessened over the years, the digital divide did not diminish accordingly. The literature review shows that middle-aged and elderly people possess poor digital skills. Which means the age factor on digital divide is difficult to eliminate. This paper intended to look beyond accessibility and explored the difference of digital skills among rural users, especially discussed the middle-aged and elderly people group. To explore what are the helps during the process of the middle-aged and elderly people acquiring Skill Access and Usage Access. To measure the users’ digital skills, this study provided free information equipments for users in rural areas in the northern and the middle Taiwan such as Ilan County, Nantou County, and Yunlin County. Content analysis was conducted and digital skills of the users were analyzed. We adopted cluster sampling method to collect 1,108 users’ records. The first phase of this research takes content analysis to investigate the influencing factors of the Skill Access and Usage Access in rural areas of Taiwan. The second phase is the interview for people in Ilan County, which has the highest population of using the Internet amoung the three counties mentioned above. In order to explore the real fact of digital divide in rural Taiwan, the researcher had interviewed 14 middle-aged and elderly people in Ilan County based on the ”van Dijk’s model” (A Cumulative and Recursive Model). This study discovered that the usage time is the main factor of Skill Access. In addition, the middle-aged and elderly Taiwan rural adults owned the different digital skills by gendr. Secondly, Usage Access of the entire rural people varied by gender and age. And the gender difference had been refined dramatically. It causes almost no difference between the Usage Access of the middle-aged and elderly in rural areas. Finally, this study modified the van Dijk’s model. We proposed that warm expert can help the middle-aged and elderly people reach the Usage Access level, bring the opportunity to bridge the Second-Level Digital Divide. The contribution of this study includes two aspects. First, in academic aspect, this study defined Skill Access as three abilities; as well the Second-Level Digital Divide dynamic model that proposed by this research offered a foundation for background knowledge and related research in the future. Second, as for the policy aspect, this study recommened the government should re-promote the warm expert policy, particularly in the rural area as well as middle-aged and elderly people groups. This study can also provide the government a brand-new thought of legislating digital divide policy.