ABSTRACT
Defined as stratification in the access and use of the Internet, the so-called digital divide is inevitably tied with the concept of social inequalities (van Dijk, 2005), a classic sociological concept. Strangely, the discipline of sociology has been slow to contribute to the debate on the Internet and social inequalities. This is surprising, because sociology has a long and fruitful tradition of studies in aspects of social inequalities, and because sociology has contributed to the debates about stratification more than any other discipline. Indeed, even if social stratification is a crucial part of all human organization ever observed, it was in the writings of the “fathers of sociology” such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, that the study of this topic became more systematic, articulated using concepts that remain with us to this day. It is inevitable therefore, from a sociological point of view, to study the digital divide using these conceptual and analytical tools. Despite this, the phenomenon of the digital divide (a fundamental aspect of social inequity in the information age) has received less sociological attention than it should (though this is changing — see, for example, DiMaggio et al., 2001; Witte and Mannon, 2010; Stern, 2010), at least using the traditions within sociology.
