Hello, I am Aquilina Fueyo, lecturer at the University of Oviedo.
In this content unit,
we will explain how digital exclusion is produced
and we will analize strategies to face it,
departing from a reflection on previous experiences.
Different studies on the access to technological devices show
that in the last few years
there has been an increase in the number of people with access to ICT in Spain.
But the difference between connected and non-connected homes is still big
in comparison to the Europeans',
and the citizens' access to the net is also below the European average.
This digital division is not just an access matter.
It has to do with the quality and different uses of technologies,
and with people's training to take advantage of it in their daily life.
Gaps appear and they are marked by the age, the gender,
the income, the educational level, and other variables that produce
digital exclusion, and, in extreme cases, digital illiteracy.
In order to get an overview of this exclusion in Spain
we will analyse data from different studies
which let us know the situation of the groups at risk of exclusion.
We will focus on the elderly, the disabled, women, immigrants
and prisoners and ex-prisoners.
European countries have tried to design policies
to slow down digital exclusion,
guaranteeing social participation.
In 2010 the Digital Agenda is designed for Europe,
whose aim is reducing the percentage of those
who have never used the Internet,
placing it in a 15% and achieving
that a 60% of the population uses the Internet regularly.
In 2013, the Digital Agenda for Spain starts up.
Its aim is that in 2015, half the population in Spain
can have a broadband connection
and an increase in the percentage of people
that usually use the Internet, from 61% to 75%.
For this content unit,
the teaching team analyzed the experiences so far
by observing the dominant tendency to a purely instrumental literacy
that leaves outside the social and linguistic barriers
of some groups,
and their technical, economical and political dependence and subordination.
As an alternative, we want to integrate strategies of intervention
that improve the instrumental vision of digital literacy,
integrating
other literacies like media, audiovisual or the intercultural literacy.
Strategies that look for inclusion,
without prioritizing programs aimed at specific groups
that label and isolate these groups.
We will revise some of these criteria,
pointing out that although digital inclusion
does not mean social inclusion,
it must be designed bearing in mind elements
that allow to strengthen that social inclusion.
That digital literacy mustn't only focus on the instrumental aspects,
but on more integrating elements,
related, for example,
to intercultural communication, the access to information about human rights, etc.
That digital literacy must incorporate
the EMIREC perspective,
training people as receivers in the search, and critical analysis of the information,
and as producers and emitters in the creation and diffusion of their own messages.
From this approach, we want to rethink with you the existing experiences
and the spaces of intervention
in relation to the types of digital division.
We will underline the existence of a third digital division
that we have to respond
with a socioeducative intervention for the empowerment,
the emancipation and development of analysing and media production,
be it digital or not.
This division is related to the scarce possibilities
that the citizens have to make a really transforming use of technologies
and with a clearly social and political dimension.
The present social shortages as a result of the management of the crisis
are generators of exclusion.
Intervention against exclusion has to consider
that people are not only workers and consumers, but above all,
citizens with rights that the public authorities
have to preserve and enhance.
We will try to enhance a use of the IT
for the empowerment of excluded people,
bringing the person at the forefront to control technology
with the aim of transforming its own personal and social environment.
This is the way to get
that the information society becomes a reality for everybody.
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