CHAPTER 11
Information and Equity
Leah A. Lievrouw
Sharon E. Farb
University of California, Los Angeles
Background and Definitions
Inequities in information creation, production, distribution, and use
are nothing new. Throughout human history some people have been
more educated, better connected, more widely traveled, or more wellinformed
than others. Until recently, relatively few have enjoyed the
benefits of literacy, and even fewer could afford to own books. In the age
of mass media, societies and social groups have varied dramatically in
terms of their access to and uses of print, radio, television, film, telephone,
and telegraph.
What is new, however, is the growing attention being given to informational
inequities in an increasingly information-driven global economy.
Across disciplinary, national, and cultural boundaries, the
widespread agreement is that the use of newer information and communication
technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet, has accelerated
the production, circulation, and consumption of information in every
form. But also a growing sense has arisen that ICTs have helped to exacerbate
existing differences in information access and use, and may even
have fostered new types of barriers. As Hess and Ostrom (2001, p. 45)
point out, "Distributed digital technologies have the dual capacity to
increase as well as restrict access to information." Similarly, Stevenson
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(2000, p. 10) notes that, "Like other communication technologies, the
Internet has the potential to both centralize and decentralize power."
Economists, sociologists, politicians, and information professionals are
keenly aware of these shifts, and in recent years have produced a raft of
studies examining the social, political, cultural, and economic implications
of the so-called "digital divide."
Of course, the relationship between information and social equity is
not just a matter of technology. Questions of informational equity must
be reassessed periodically in light of changing social, political, cultural,
and economic conditions. As the social and material conditions of society
evolve, old arrangements and understandings may break down or be supplanted
by new ones. Notions of equity and inequity are dynamic, and
depend on both stated and unstated principles and assumptions. They
can be fully understood only within specific contexts, or, to paraphrase
Amartya Sen, by addressing the question "equity of what?" (Sen, 1992).
Therefore, in this chapter we review a selection of recent studies from
various disciplines on information and social equity, and on the digital
divide. Our primary purpose is to use this overview as an opportunity to
outline a basic conceptual framework for thinking about information
equity. The following discussion has three main parts.
First, we review a long tradition of research, ranging from early studies
of the information "rich and poor" through today's explorations of the
digital divide, in which information access and use are generally
assumed to be functions of individual and/or group demographics (e.g.,
income, gender, age, language, ethnicity, education level, geographic
location) or other traits. We characterize this as the vertical or hierarchical
perspective because it associates better information access and
use with greater social and economic advantages. Historically this has
been the prevalent (and often the sole) approach to the study of
inequities and the formulation of relevant policy.
From this perspective information tends to be viewed as a kind of private
good or commodity; people use their social and economic advantages
to acquire more of it, or to obtain scarce or high-quality
information. People who are (for example) wealthier, more educated,
younger, or who live in affluent neighborhoods are assumed to have
greater access to all kinds of information, and are better able to use it,
than those who are poorer, less educated, older, live in poor or rural
Information and Equity 501
areas, and so on. Therefore, in most studies of information equity, social
groups and individuals are compared or classified in terms of their
demographics and other socioeconomic characteristics because those
characteristics are taken as proxies for information access and use
(McCreadie & Rice, 1999).
By the same token, analysts who make these vertical assumptions
tend to conceptualize information access and use problems as a straightforward
matter of the distribution of goods, including technological systems,
financial support, social services, and information sources. From
this perspective, greater equality of information access and use can be
achieved by a more even redistribution of these goods among various
groups, and indeed, most policy proposals to date have focused almost
exclusively on this goods-distribution approach.
But another body of work takes a different view-namely, that people
and groups with similar social and economic traits may nonetheless
vary widely in terms of their information needs, access, and use. We
characterize this as the horizontal or heterarchical perspective1 because
it focuses on the differences in people's interests, concerns, expertise,
experiences, and social contexts that affect their requirements for and
uses of information, even within the same community, economic, or ethnic
group.
From this perspective, information is seen more as an intangible
public good that is highly subjective and context dependent. The quantity
of resources available to an individual or group may be less important
than the quality or salience of what is available from the point of
view of the people involved. A growing number of observers, influenced
by thinkers like Amartya Sen and John Rawls, argue that the fairness
or equity of access and use, rather than the more or less equal distribution
of information goods, may be a more useful foundation for studying
inequities and formulating appropriate social policies. From the horizontal
viewpoint, policy should consider values and content issues
(Lievrouw, 2000; Schement, 1995) and how well people are able to make
use of the resources they have in a particular context (Garnham, 1999;
Besser, 1995).
Although this perspective may seem intuitively obvious (for example,
no two engineers, day care workers, or historians will seek and use information
in precisely the same way), it has generally been neglected in
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research and policy discussions on the grounds that such differences are
a matter of personal choice or idiosyncrasy, and thus not suitable (or
easy) objects for study or policy intervention. Still, they can have important
social consequences, particularly as ICTs increasingly allow some
people to tailor or customize available information to their interests and
situations.
We conclude our discussion by proposing that information equity can
be achieved only by integrating both perspectives in the formulation of
information policy. We suggest five primary elements (access, skills, content,
values, context) that should be incorporated into any analysis of
equitable information access and use.
Equity vs. Equality
The concepts of equity and equality have long histories in social theory
and research, yet they are seldom consistently defined. To complicate
matters, notions of equity are often confounded with definitions of equality,
as when Sen says that "The concepts of equity and justice have
changed remarkably over history, and as the intolerance of stratification
and differentiation has grown, the very concept of inequality has gone
through radical transformation" (Sen, 1973, pp. 1-2; emphasis added).
For example, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe (1988, citing
Dworkin) uses the term equality to denote two distinct legal principles.
On one hand is equality of treatment, the ideal embodied in the U.S.
Constitution as "equal justice under the law." It is reserved for limited
situations, such as voting, in which every person must be granted identical
privileges or rights. On the other hand, he describes the right to
treatment as an equal, a principle of American legal tradition that is not
tied to any particular Constitutional language. It says that the state
must treat each individual with equal regard as a person, no matter
what his or her particular interests may be, and acknowledges that the
conditions or outcomes of treatment may vary from case to case.
In discussions of information access and use, it may in fact be crucial
to distinguish between equity and equality. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines equality as "the quality or condition of being equal"
and equal as "identical in magnitude, number, value, intensity, etc.; possessing
a like degree of a (specified or implied) quality or attribute; on the
Information and Equity 503
same level in rank, dignity, power, ability, achievement, or excellence;
having the same rights or privileges." This definition has the advantage
of specifying the criteria by which equality might be measured or evaluated.
For example, sociologist Charles Tilly (1998, p. 25) defines "human
inequality" as the "uneven distribution of attributes among a set of social
units such as individuals, categories, groups, or regions."
The OED definition of equity, on the other hand, is more nuanced:
"the quality of being equal or fair; fairness, impartiality." Its etymology
derives from the Greek epiky, meaning "principles of reasonableness and
moderation in the exercise of one's rights." Unlike equality, it is more difficult
to specifY universal criteria for "reasonableness and moderation"
that would make it possible to assess absolutely whether a social situation
is equitable or not, or to make comparisons across situations with
regard to their relative degrees of equity.
However, as Michael Gorman (2000) notes, when it comes to discussions
of information access and use, the concept of equity does have one
important edge over equality: equity, or fairness, of access to information
across individuals or groups is attainable, whereas strict equality of
access is not. In our view, this characteristic of attainability or possibility
is precisely what makes equity a more useful term for both scholarly
research and pragmatic policy making. It has the advantage of other
"terms of art" in legal and policy discussions, such as the "public interest"
or "reasonable doubt," which can be adapted flexibly as times and
circumstances require.
We also agree with our ARIST predecessor, Ron Doctor (1992, p. 52),
that equity is the more appropriate term because "equity embodies the
idea of justice according to natural law or right as opposed to equality
which means identical in value." Clearly, where information is concerned
very few social situations exist in which information resources
can be characterized as identical in value.
By the term "information equity," then, we mean the fair or reasonable
distribution of information among individuals, groups, regions, categories,
or other social units, such that those people have the
opportunity to achieve whatever is important or meaningful to them in
their lives. To the extent that information is unfairly distributed, people
are denied such opportunities and information inequity exists. In such
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circumstances, policies should be formulated to promote more equitable
information access and use.
Why Equity?
Why do we care about information and social equity? The main
answer is that equitable access to information is, in principle, a fundamental
and necessary (though not sufficient) condition for effective personal
achievement and social participation, in whatever contexts and to
whatever degree people consider important. As economist and philosopher
Amartya Sen points out, "every plausibly defendable ethical theory
of social arrangements tends to demand equality in some 'space,' requiring
equal treatment of individuals in some significant aspect-in terms
of some variable that is important in that particular theory" (Sen, 1992,
p. 130; emphasis in the original). In information studies and a few other
fields, information access is that important variable, that significant
"space." Indeed, it is difficult even to conceive of other "spaces" for equality
that would not require access to information as a prerequisite,
including economic opportunity, creativity, self-sufficiency, freedom,
security, or psychological well being.
So information equity, in our view, has value in and of itself. But
another key reason why we are concerned with equity is that inequities
of access and use have important social consequences. As Deborah Young
(2001, p. 8) points out, "it is the causes and consequences of some pattern
of inequality, rather than the pattern itself, that raises issues of justice."
And chief among these "causes and consequences" of information
inequity is the role that information plays in political participation and
power, as Doctor (1992) argued so forcefully in the previousARIST chapter
on information and social equity. Indeed, this has historically been
the primary justification of equity studies in library and information science
research and library policies intended to promote equity (De la
Pefia McCook, 2001; Shera, 1974).
Democratic political systems, in particular, make claims to legitimacy
partly on the basis of their citizens' ability to seek and obtain reliable,
credible information about issues that affect them, information that
allows them to interact with other citizens and with their governing
institutions. The relationship between information and democracy has
Information and Equity 505
been set out in theories of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989), deliberative
democracy (Dervin, 1994; Sunstein, 2001), and discourse democracy
(Hagen, 1992; Lievrouw, 1994).
Indeed, the relationship between access to information and democratic
political participation is so ingrained in the U.S. tradition that
Americans have come to have "democratic expectations" about their
sources of information (Gurevitch & Blumler, 1990). This premise is
embodied in the "marketplace of ideas" concept and in key public institutions
that have been established to ensure broad-based access to information
(e.g., compulsory public education, land-grant universities, the
U.S. Govemment Printing Office, public libraries, the speech and press
freedoms of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the U.S.
Postal Service).
Certainly many other reasons also explain why the link between
information and social equity is a perennial issue for study and debate,
including interest in cultivating knowledge, art, culture, science, and
technology. Space is too limited here to discuss them all. But for present
purposes, we can say that no social arrangements, indeed, no culture or
society, can exist without information; and we believe that a primary
requirement for a "good society" is equitable information access and use.
Two Perspectives on Information
and Equity
The Vertical Perspective
Most information equity research has taken the social, economic, and
demographic characteristics of different groups as a point of departure.
Such studies suggest that these characteristics influence, or can even
determine, the group's information needs, access, and use; that is, groups
with more socially or economically advantageous characteristics enjoy
better information access and use than less advantaged groups. We do
not attempt an exhaustive review of this literature here. But in this first
part of the discussion we highlight a series of landmark studies that we
think best illustrate the key problems, and the typical research strategies,
of what we call "vertical" studies of information equity.
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Information Rich and Poor
Concerns about information access and use have become more visible
with the recent spread of new information technologies and services.
However, these concerns are just the latest manifestation of a much
older debate about the nature and prevalence of "information haves and
have-nots" (Arunachalam, 1998) or the "information rich and poor" in
society (Haywood, 1995).2 In information studies, this line of research
extends back at least to Bernard Berelson's (1949) study of library use
in the U.S., where he found that library use was positively related to
income, education, and other socioeconomic status (SES) variables.
As the language of "rich" and "poor" suggests, most of these studies
assume (sometimes implicitly) that people with more wealth or other
social advantages are better able to obtain and use information, just as
they can other private goods and services. The studies also assume (if
tacitly) that information has the characteristics of a private good or commodity
that can be exchanged for other social or economic advantages.
Technology has made information "costly to produce, but very cheap to
reproduce, especially in digital form" (Shapiro & Varian, 1997, p. 5).
Therefore, the reasoning goes, virtually any type of information can be
treated as having material properties, and thus can be exchanged in
market-type relationships.
The commodity view is commonly (although not universally) held in
information studies (Meadow & Yuan, 1997), perhaps because it equates
information with its recorded forms (i.e., documents or other material
artifacts that are produced, managed, circulated, stored, and maintained).
3 Advocates claim that information must be treated as a good or
commodity to ensure effective information management and retrieval
(Buckland, 1991), or to formulate effective economic and policy decisions
(Branscomb, 1994), given current technological systems and institutional
structures.
In the mid-1970s, Childers and Post (1975) wrote their classic assessment
of the "information poor in America." They framed their study
using a model of information delivery resembling the linear senderreceiver
model of communication, which casts individuals as receivers
with needs for particular types of information: "Need is a construct, an
abstraction that has been developed from a number of indirect observations
such as what a person says he needs, or how he acts" (Childers &
Information and Equity 507
Post, 1975, p. 15). Similar to Berelson's earlier findings, their survey
data indicated that information poverty was associated with economic
and social disadvantages.
Their findings also paralleled studies in communication research that
examined differences in the consumption of mass media content by different
social groups (Dervin & Greenberg, 1972; Siefert, Gerbner, &
Fisher, 1989). Most notably among these studies, Tichenor, Donohue,
and Olien (1970) developed the "knowledge gap" hypothesis. This
hypothesis states that flows of information into a community are likely
to produce "an increase of the gap in information acquisition between
members of lower and upper socioeconomic status (SES), thereby exacerbating
the existing inequities" (Viswanath, Kosicki, Fredin, & Park,
2000, p. 28; see also Viswanath & Finnegan, 1996). According to the
knowledge gap theory, the education level of different groups in the community
is among the most important factors affecting their exposure to
information. Subsequent knowledge gap studies have suggested that
people's interest in, or motivations about, a particular topic, and the
extent of their interpersonal ties within the community, are just as influential
as education in determining which groups know about a topic.
By 1977 sufficient studies of the characteristics of library users had
been published that Zweizig and Dervin (1977) could conduct the first
meta-analysis of this research. They found that, although results varied
somewhat according to the research design and how survey questions
were asked, all of the studies had obtained data about library users'
demographics (e.g., age, sex, race, marital status, SES, and education).
Across the entire set of studies they analyzed, education level was the
strongest predictor oflibrary use. However, education was so closely correlated
with SES variables such as income or occupation that it was difficult
to distinguish the effects of SES from education.
Zweizig and Dervin also found that library use correlated positively
with heavy reading habits, extensive social networks (i.e., community
involvement), certain information use variables (the number of information
needs and potential information sources named by the respondents),
and selected personality measures (achievement motivation
and open-mindedness). However, library use was only moderately correlated
with the user's distance from the library and length of residence
in the community. Zweizig and Dervin (1977) concluded that
508 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
studies of library users' characteristics were unlikely to provide data
that would help libraries reach new audiences or be more accountable
to their communities.
Despite Zweizig and Dervin's skepticism about SES and other demographic
factors, however, the association between material wealth or
social status and access to information has remained a key assumption
in subsequent studies of information access and equity. International
policy organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), UNESCO (United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), and others, routinely
associate access to information resources and services (e.g., telephone
service or education) with demographic variables or SES data.
In a recent report on intra- and cross-national "gaps" in information
access and use issued by the Social Responsibilities Discussion Group
of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA), Kagan (1999, p. 1) underlines the relationship between
wealth and information access:
To a greater or larger extent all countries have information
gaps. The United States and South Mrica are examples of
two countries that have extremely skewed distribution of
wealth, resulting in excellent information services for some
and poor or non-existent services for others.
He then goes on to define the "information poor" as
(1) The economically disadvantaged populations of the developing
countries (The South); (2) Rural people who are often
geographically isolated by lack of communication and transportation
systems; (3) Those disadvantaged by cultural and
social poverty, especially the illiterate, the elderly, women,
and children; (4) Minorities who are discriminated against
by race, creed and religion; and (5) The physically disabled.
The IFLA report is consistent with the historical concern among public
librarians that poorer communities must be well served to help those
groups participate in democratic processes. De la Pefl.a McCook (2001)
has called this the "democratizing function" of libraries. She traces the
Information and Equity 509
evolution of American public library policies and practices, and finds evidence
to support four factors that Jesse Shera (1974, pp. 221-222) identified
previously as links between the American universal schooling
movement and the movement for tax-supported public libraries:
(1) The growing awareness of the ordinary man and his
importance to the group; (2) the conviction that universal literacy
is essential to an enlightened people; (3) a belief in the
practical value of technical studies; and (4) an enthusiasm for
education for its own sake.
De la Pefia McCook suggests that librarians must understand the
socioeconomic context of poverty in order to design and deliver effective
information and outreach services.
The American Library Association's (ALA) recent equity policies have
also concentrated on the needs of social groups with economic, gender,
race, physical, or geographic disadvantages (for examples, see the Web
site for the ALA Office of Information and Technology Policy,
http://www.ala.org/oitp/). In 1990 the ALA adopted a policy that specifically
addressed library services for the poor, again with the aim of
improving their political enfranchisement and participation: "It is crucial
that libraries recognize their role in enabling poor people to participate
fully in a democratic society, by utilizing a wide variety of available
resources and strategies" (American Library Association, 1999, online).
In recent years, some equity researchers have moved away from
broad-based social surveys and analyses to study communities and
groups in depth using ethnographic techniques such as interviewing or
participant observation. Like the larger-scale studies, however, these
projects are generally motivated by the premise that social disadvantages
produce informational disadvantages.
For example, following the lead of the earlier "knowledge gap" studies,
Elfreda Chatman investigated what she called the "information
worlds" of the working poor, older women, prisoners, and low-skilled
workers (Chatman, 1985, 1987, 1992, 2000; Chatman & Pendleton,
1995). She found that these groups' social and cultural norms influence
their behavior in ways that can adversely affect their access to information,
and so contribute to "information poverty" (Chatman, 1996).
510 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
Similarly, Lipinski (1999b) found that people who need legal assistance
but cannot afford computer-assisted legal research, including
prisoners and other "lower order litigants," are less able to find and
cite unpublished precedents online to prepare their cases than are
"upper order litigants."
In recent case studies, gender has been proposed as a factor in both the
provision of and access to information services (Harris, 1995/1996; Shade,
1998). Ethnic and language groups have been compared in terms of their
information access and use (Liu, 1995). Chu (1999) argues that linguistic
minorities' literacy practices differ from those of majorities, and therefore
influence minorities' access to information. Other analysts have suggested
that certain members of minority language or inner-city communities
may act as information "gatekeepers" for other members, and have
a profound influence on the availability and flow of information within a
community (Agada, 1999; Metoyer-Duran, 1991, 1993a, 1993b).
The 1990s and the Digital Divide
In the last decade, studies of information access and use by different
social groups have been overshadowed to some extent by the growing
importance of new information technologies, particularly networked
computing and multimedia available via the Internet and the World
Wide Web. In the 1990s these systems and services diffused well beyond
their original bases in research, higher education, and a few major
industries into diverse workplaces, homes, and leisure activities, especially
with the advent of wireless services.
Figures from the OECD illustrate the scope of the changes, both in
the U.S. and abroad. In 1988, American information technology (IT)
industries were already growing at more than double the rate of the
overall U.S. economy. At that time they represented 8.2 percent of U.S.
gross domestic product; but by the mid-1990s, on average, they
accounted for over one-quarter of total real economic growth each year.
In 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(2000, p. 2) noted that the U.S. "is the lead country in terms ofiT expenditures
and IT share as a share of GDP. Owing to the size of the U.S.
market, its IT market structure and growth are similar to those of the
OECD as a whole."
Information and Equity 511
Again, the primary concern, even in this context of spectacular technological
growth, has been that poor and disadvantaged groups are relatively
less able to access and use IT. As early as 1991, Doctor (1991, p.
216) warned:
As a society we are giving inadequate attention to ensuring
that as new computer and telecommunications technologies
become more pervasive, their benefits are distributed in ways
that don't exacerbate existing disparities between the rich
and the poor.
Today, more than a decade later, it is difficult to inventory the variety
of information resources supported by new technologies. Content and
services that were once clearly demarcated (and regulated) according to
the technological systems and institutions that produced and distributed
them (e.g., print, broadcasting, still and motion film and video,
audio recordings, artworks, telephony) have converged. Hybrid systems
can now generate and deliver digital content in almost any form. The
conventional boundaries of the institutions and industries associated
with these technologies have also softened as the result of cross-ownership,
innovative alliances among firms, and the development of new
forms of organizing that take advantage of ICTs. All of these changes
have affected the availability of information sources and technologies
among different social groups.
The information "gaps" of an earlier era have been recast as the "digital
divide." The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) employed the term "digital divide" as early as
1995 in its original Falling Through the Net report, and in subsequent
updates, to describe differences in access to telecommunications and
Internet resources in different American households (U.S. Department
of Commerce. National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, 1995, 1998, 1999). The NTIA has taken an explicitly
vertical approach to the problem, defining the digital divide as "the disparities
in access to telephones, personal computers (PCs), and the
Internet across certain demographic groups" (U.S. Department of
Commerce. National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
1999, online). More simply, it is "the divide between those with
512 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
access to new technologies and those without" (U.S. Department of
Commerce, 1998, online).
Likewise, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (2001, p. 5) defines the digital divide as "the gap between
individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different
socioeconomic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access
information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of
the Internet for a wide variety of activities." Critics charge that "society
should not be separated into information haves and have-nots" along
economic lines (U.S. Congress. Office of Management and Budget, 2001,
online). More bluntly, the digital divide has been called "cyberapartheid"
(Putnam, 2000, p. 175). Others believe that IT creates both digital
divides and digital opportunities, but that bridging the divides is a necessary
precondition for the blossoming of creativity worldwide: "To begin
with, universal access must be defined, ideally, as a basic necessity, if not
a right" (lshaq, 2001, p. 2).
In the late 1990s, several major survey studies began to correlate
Internet and telecommunications access with income, education level,
race/ethnicity, age, employment, Internet experience, and computer ownership,
among other variables (e.g., Cooper & Kimmelman, 1999;
Hoffman, Kalsbeek, & Novak, 1996; Hoffman & Novak, 1998; Katz &
Aspden, 1997a, 1997b, 1998; Kraut, Scherlis, Mukhopadhyay, Manning,
& Kiesler, 1996; National Public Radio, 1999). Recently, foundations and
research universities have undertaken national-scale survey research in
the U.S. that tracks respondents' attitudes and beliefs about the Internet
as well as their activities online (e.g., Howard, Rainie, & Jones, 2001; Nie
& Erbring, 2000; University of California Los Angeles. Center for
Communication Policy, 2002). Generally speaking, and in line with previous
research, these studies have found that Internet access and use are
positively related to favorable demographic traits or higher socioeconomic
status (although some recent studies have shown that the large
racial, gender, and income gaps observed in the mid-1990s are narrowing,
e.g., Birdsell, Muzzio, Krane, & Cottreau, 1998; Hoffman & Novak, 1998).
Within information studies, it is argued that important roles exist for
public libraries in any community-wide effort to bridge the digital divide
(Bishop, Tidline, Shoemaker, & Salela, 2000). Gladieux and Watson
(1999, p. 5) conclude that "the result of new technologies may be to
Information and Equity 513
deepen the divide between educational haves and have nots," and that
the market will not solve the problem. They call for public policy that
will narrow the digital divide between whites and minorities, and
between the wealthy and the poor. Barraket and Scott (2001) argue that
to ensure equity of information technology access in academic libraries,
more resources must be directed toward infrastructure, training users in
the appropriate use of ICTs, and effective support.
Limitations of the Vertical Perspective
We have reviewed just a sample of"vertical" equity studies, including
studies of the digital divide, that have been conducted to date. But what
seems clear, even from this selected survey, is that most of them either
assume or present evidence to support the hypothesis that social and
economic characteristics are related to, or influence, information access
and use. More affluent, better-educated, or higher-status individuals
and groups are found to have access to more information sources, a
wider range of media and content consumption choices, and more online
access than other groups. (They are even more frequent library visitors.)
The publicity surrounding the digital divide has simply served to bring
these perennial problems of informational inequity center stage.
The vertical approach has a great deal of intuitive and pragmatic
appeal, especially if information is treated as an objective good, like
other material goods. And of course there is a long tradition in social
research of using demographics or other group characteristics as indicators
or predictors of social participation, behavior, and attitudes. But
disadvantages also occur in using terms like "gaps," "haves and havenots,"
"rich and poor," or "divides" to discuss information resources and
technologies.
As McCreadie and Rice (1999) point out, to varying degrees most current
studies of information access assume or argue for a sort of reinforcing
"Matthew effect" (Merton, 1968, 1988), or power law of cumulative
advantage, in which greater social and economic advantages are
assumed to entail more or better information access and use. ("More"
and "better" are often operationalized simply as the frequency of library
visits or hours spent engaged in media use, such as reading, watching
television, or searching Web sites online.) In turn, so the argument goes,
514 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
better access and use enhance users' social and economic resources, and
thus reinforce their material advantages and circumstances.
Yet owning information or having access to particular sources or technologies
may not confer any particular benefit per se. Information
resources are valuable only insofar as they are meaningful or useful to
the people who have access to them. The ability to derive a benefit from
a resource depends to a great extent on people's skills, experience, and
other contextual factors.
Moreover, the wealth/poverty, rich/poor metaphor may encourage the
perception that information "wealth," like other types of wealth, is finite
and cumulative. It suggests the possibility to measure with some precision
just how much more or less information one person or group has or
uses than another.4 Carried to its logical conclusion, the wealth/poverty
metaphor implies that information access and use among very low status
or severely disadvantaged groups may approach zero, whereas elites may
have far more information, which they may hoard or redistribute. At best,
this seems to be a somewhat incomplete account of the complex role that
information sources and technologies play in people's lives.
The Horizontal Perspective
If most studies of information equity to date have tied information
access and use to social and economic status, a rival school of thought
has also developed over the last decade. We call this alternative
approach the horizontal perspective because its adherents see significant
differences in information access and use among members of social
groups as well as up and down the socioeconomic ladder, because of both
the nature of information and the varying capacity of individuals to benefit
from it.
From the horizontal perspective, information is not just a good or
commodity like any other; it also has characteristics of a public good that
anyone may use without depleting what is available for others.
"Information can be both a private or public good, and many of the
debates on access to it hinge on which of these factors should condition
its use" (Haywood, 1995, p. 83). Therefore, information equity cannot be
achieved by the redistribution of material resources-information services
and systems-alone. Rather, equity is achieved only when people
are able to participate effectively in whatever aspects of society, and to
Information and Equity 515
whatever extent, they desire. Consequently, the task for researchers is
to assess the quality as well as the distribution of available resources,
and whether and how well people use them. The goal of policy is to
ensure that individuals are able to accomplish their particular ends and
purposes, and participate effectively in society, given the information
resources available to them.
In this part of the discussion we review the main philosophical and
theoretical influences on the horizontal perspective, as well as recent
research and scholarship that takes the horizontal approach.
Theoretical and Philosophical Influences
Within information studies, the origins of the horizontal perspective
can be traced to what Dervin and Nilan (1986) describe as a paradigm
shift in studies of information seeking and use that occurred in the 1970s.
Dissatisfied with certain core assumptions oflibrary and information science
research, and with a growing sense of epistemological uncertainty
about whether "information is discovered or constructed" (Dick, 1999, p.
309), some researchers began to move away from the traditional expertdriven,
top-down design of information organization, storage and
retrieval systems (Swanson, 1997). Instead oftrying to adapt information
seekers to existing systems, the new "user studies" seek a better understanding
of the seekers themselves, how they subjectively understand the
world and construct meaning, as well as the intricate variability of
human social contexts and information-seeking behavior (Bates, 2001;
Fidel, 2001). The new paradigm redefined "information [as] a subjective
phenomenon, constructed at least to some extent by the user, and not an
objective phenomenon" (Cole, 1994, p. 465).
Therefore, the shift also involved a rejection of the view of information
as an objective good. Such a view, critics said, does not account for
certain intangible forms of information in society that are socially constructed,
context dependent, and contingent, and that help people solve
problems in their everyday lives (e.g., institutional arrangements, social
relationships, cultural norms, facts, ideas [Dervin, 1976]). Furthermore,
they argued, information separated from its context is distorted at best
and meaningless at worst (Agre, 1995; Dervin, 1980, 1983). Therefore, it
is counterintuitive and even socially questionable to treat all types of
information as goods to be owned and exchanged.
516 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
The horizontal perspective, thus, is grounded in a phenomenological
and constructivist view of information. But it has also been influenced
by the political economy of information, especially the critique of information
as a commodity developed in social theories of information society
and the economics of information (e.g., Antonelli, 1992; Arrow, 1984;
Bell, 1973; Lamberton, 1971, 2002; Slack & Fejes, 1987). For example,
critical communications scholar Herb Schiller (1983, p. 538) has insisted
that "information is a social good, a vital resource that benefits the total
community when made freely available for general public use."
Similarly, Oscar Gandy (1988, p. 108) has proposed that
To understand and be understood is the most basic human
right, one which must be secured for all as we emerge into
this postindustrial, information society. It is the right upon
which all other human rights ultimately come to depend, and
it may be shown to have always been central, at least in theory,
to the functioning of democratic society.
A related concern in horizontal studies of equity is the justice or fairness
of information access and use. In recent years the work of political
philosopher John Rawls, and of the economic philosopher and Nobelist
Amartya Sen, has been widely influential in this area. The two scholars
have been engaged in a friendly dialogue for decades, as they have
refined their respective positions regarding equality and justice (e.g.,
Rawls, 2001; Sen, 1992). Their thinking informs a growing body of work
regarding information and equity, and so their main points are summarized
here.
According to Sen (1973, p. 3), any definition of inequality entails both
objective and normative aspects: "it becomes very difficult to speak of
inequality in a purely objective way, and the measurement of the
inequality level could be intractable without bringing in some ethical
concepts." The central ethical concept in contemporary discussions of
equality/equity is justice, and John Rawls's (1999, 2001) formulations of
distributive justice andjustice as fairness are cited by many observers.
Put simply, Rawls defines equality as "a particular principle of distributive
justice-that which starts from the prima facie assumption
that all people may legitimately make the same claims on social
Information and Equity 517
resources" (Hochschild, 1981, p. 46). He calls for the fair distribution of
certain "primary goods," including "the basic rights and liberties ... freedom
of movement and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority
and responsibility[;] income and wealth ... [and] the social bases of selfrespect"
(Rawls, 2001, pp. 58-59).
Rawls's criterion of fairness is based on what he calls the "original
position"; that is, terms of social cooperation are fair when they are the
product of "an agreement reached by free and equal citizens engaged in
cooperation, and made in view of what they regard as their reciprocal
advantage, or good" (Rawls, 2001, p. 15). To ensure parity in such discussions,
Rawls suggests a hypothetical test, the "veil of ignorance," in
which participants do not know their own interests, ranks, or resources
and so must take the point of view of others in the group or society in
order to arrive at a fair agreement.
Sen (1999, p. 112) paraphrases this process: "Fairness for a group of
people involves arriving at rules and guiding principles of social organization
that pay similar attention to everyone's interests, concerns, and
liberties." He accepts Rawls's concept of fairness as a point of departure,
but disagrees that equality is best achieved by the fair distribution of
primary goods. Famously, he asks: "Equality of what?" (Sen, 1973, 1992),
and argues that such goods do not confer any advantages or state of
being in and of themselves. Rather, they are a means to an end.
Sen points out that the ability of individuals to use primary goods to
achieve their particular ends varies drastically from person to person,
group to group, and situation to situation. There is a difference between
an individual's state of well being and her or his achievement of well
being, or agency (Garnham, 1999). Sen's principal concern is creating
and maintaining individual agency; and he believes that it is more
important to preserve and enhance each actor's choices than to distribute
some ostensibly "essential" bundle of goods that actors may or may
not consider meaningful or useful in a given situation.
Therefore, Sen says, the proper focus of any theory of social justice
should be what he calls people's "functionings" and "capabilities."
"Functionings are what a person does or is. Capabilities are the set of
alternative functionings a person has (his or her real opportunities)"
(Garnham, 1999, p. 117). Capabilities, and whether they can be exercised,
are necessarily defined from the actor's point of view. Equity, then,
518 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
would entail the fair distribution of opportunities to achieve whatever
people may value doing or being, i.e., the fair distribution of capabilities,
rather than of primary goods as Rawls suggests, because even the most
scrupulously equal distribution of material resources will not result in
equity of opportunities.
A growing number of policy researchers have adopted Sen's capabilities
framework, or similar concepts, in their analyses. For example, the
OECD views the cultivation of "human capital" as the key to enduring
economic development (Healy, 1998), where human capital is defined as
the cultivation of individual ability (Coleman, 1990). Many experts who
study universal service in telecommunications and public service obligations
in broadcasting now recognize that:
Information is not like food or energy of which everybody
needs a bare minimum (an information ration of sorts) in
order to survive. Information only has value when a recipient
has some need for it and the capacity to process it. Otherwise
information is a resource that is of no use. (Sawhney, 2000, p.
162; emphasis added)
Nicholas Garnham advocates the capabilities approach as a new
direction for social policy in communications that departs from its traditional
focus on the allocation and distribution of resources like telephone
dial tone or high-speed bandwidth. These resources, he argues, have
already been left mainly to market forces. Communications policy, he
says, must "get beyond the superficial indexes of access and usage that
we so often use ... these are crude indicators and do not get to the heart
of the matter" (Garnham, 1999, pp. 120-121). Although it is possible and
desirable, within the capabilities approach, to specify some set of "subsistence"
resources to which each member of a society in a given place
and time must have access (including communication resources), "access
is not enough" (Garnham, 1999, p. 121). More important, he says, is
the ability of people actually to make use of these options, to
achieve, the relevant functionings ... We need to think of
newspapers and broadcasting as enablers of a range of
Information and Equity 519
functionings rather than as providers of a stream of content
to be consumed. (Gamham, 1999, p. 121)
A similar stance has been adopted in some library and information
policy circles. A decade ago, Doctor (1991, p. 217) noted that access to
technology by itself is not enough to ensure equity:
Access will be oflittle benefit to large portions of the population,
unless it is accompanied by equipment and training that
allow effective use of that access. What we need then is a
"right to access" in the broader sense of a "right to benefit
from access (emphasis in the original)."
In a recent report to the National Library of Canada on access, equity,
and the Internet, Vincent Mosco argues that Canadian social and information
policy should pay as much attention to cultivating individuals'
abilities and interests as to the provisions of telecommunications and
Internet services:
It is important to broaden our definition of access from the
traditional idea that access means the availability of a particular
set of hardware and software technologies. In a deeper
sense, access requires a set of capabilities, intellectual, social,
and cultural, from basic literacy to higher education, that are
necessary to make effective use of the Information Highway.
(Mosco, 2000, p. 1, emphasis added)
Social Capital and Public Goods
These combined influences-a phenomenological, subjective view of
information; the critique of information commodification from political
economy; a view of social justice as fairness rather than strict equality;
and the capabilities approach-have led some information equity
researchers to look beyond the simple distribution of resources as a solution
for inequity problems. One focus is the role that people's social networks
play in their information access and use, and the related concepts
of social capital and public goods.
520 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
Broadly speaking, social capital is one type of capacity, in Sen's sense.
It is the benefit people derive from having relationships with others in
society. It "is not a single entity, but a variety of different entities ...
[that] all consist of some aspect of social structure, and facilitate certain
actions of individuals who are within the structure" (Coleman, 1990, p.
302). Political scientist Robert Putnam (2000, p. 21) suggests that "social
capital-that is, social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity----{!
omes in many different shapes and sizes with many different
uses." And a crucial form of social capital is "the potential for information
that inheres in social relations" (Coleman, 1990, p. 310), that is,
what members of a social network know, and may express and share in
their interactions with one another.
Several sociologically oriented writers have begun to make the case for
the role of social networks in information equity (e.g., DiMaggio,
Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001; Putnam, 2000; Wellman, Salaff,
Dimitrova, Garton, Gulia, & Haythornthwaite, 1996). Obviously, for most
people the first and most credible information sources are family members,
friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow church or club members, and
so on. Even when people do consult documentary sources, such as news
media, Web sites, advertising, or library collections, they typically "check
out" the information they find with other people they trust. Therefore,
social networks are information sources, and they also perform an important
"filtering" or contextualizing function for their members.
Social networks are also powerful information resources because they
are greater than the sum of social relations and reciprocal exchanges
within the group. They help shape the character or sensibility of the
wider communities in which they exist (Coleman, 1990). The larger or
more extensive the network, the greater its value to each individual
member as a source of information and social capital. That is, social networks
and the social capital they confer on their members have important
externalities, which give them the quality of public goods (Putnam,
2000, p. 20). Indeed, a number of writers today argue that many types
of information, technological systems, knowledge, and cultural heritage
should properly be considered public, rather than private, goods (Anton,
Fisk, & Holmstrom, 2000; Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000; Lessig, 1999a,
2001; Serageldin, 1999; Spar, 1999; Stiglitz, 1999; Sy, 1999; van den
Hoven, 1998).
Information and Equity 521
Private and public goods differ in two important respects.
Characteristically, private goods are rival in consumption-that is, a
good consumed by one person becomes unavailable for anyone else. They
are also excludable, that is, some people can be prevented from consuming
them. Food, clothing, and most other types of material goods and
property are treated as private goods.
Public goods, in contrast, are nonriual in consumption: one person's
use of the good does not deplete what is available for others. And public
goods are nonexcludable, meaning that no one can practicably or reasonably
be prevented from using them. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam
Smith (1993) offers the classic example of a lighthouse as a public good.
Its beams cannot be restricted to being seen by just some ships and not
others; and one ship's use of the lighthouse as a guide does not keep any
other ship from using it as well. More contemporary examples include
traffic signs, broadcast television and radio signals, and the Internet, as
Lawrence Lessig (1999b, online) observes: "It's out there for the taking;
and what you take leaves as much for me as there was before."
Certainly, then, to the extent that information and its related technologies
fulfill these criteria, they are public goods. To understand the
significance of information as a public good, we can compare it with
another familiar good, water. Sax (1970) argues that water belongs to a
distinct and special category of property that serves as a community
resource and can never fully be privatized. He cites three reasons for
this special treatment.
First, water has unique physical characteristics. Unlike other important
resources (e.g., petroleum), it has no physical substitute. And bodies
of water act as a public commons that provides access to waterways for
navigation, fishing, and recreation. Second, water has historically been
given special legal treatment. The public trust doctrine, in particular, has
helped to ensure universal access to water resources for navigation and
sustenance. Third, water is a "heritage resource," that is, communities
see water as part of their legacy. They feel strong attachments to water
resources just as they do to antiquities or other cultural property.
Does information fulfill these three criteria for being uniquely "public"?
Certainly, it can be said that there is no substitute for information
in human affairs and life experience. As Braman (1989, p. 239) notes, it
is a constitutive force in society: "Information is that which is not just
522 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
embedded within a social structure, but creates the structure itself."
Information also has the characteristics of a public commons, a feature
that was recognized by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a justification
for both the First Amendment and Article I Section 8, which provides
for copyright and the public domain to "promote science and the
useful arts."
The legal and institutional history of information is also analogous to
that for water. It has been treated as both a community resource to be
used by everyone, and as private property and a commodity. In the U.S.,
important institutions (public education, public libraries, the postal service)
and laws and regulations (the First Amendment to the
Constitution, the public service and universal service obligations of
broadcast and telecommunications carriers) safeguard the broad availability
of all types of information. In 1813, Thomas Jefferson noted the
"peculiar character" of information:
No one possesses the less, because every other possesses the
whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives
instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights
his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That
ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe,
for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement
of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot,
in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive
right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement
to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but
this may or may not be done, according to the will and conventions
of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody
. . . The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of
natural right, but for the benefit of society (T. Jefferson, letter
to Isaac Macpherson, 1813).
Similarly, in a dissent in International News Service us. Associated
Press, Justice Louis Brandeis commented that "the general rule oflaw is,
that the noblest of human productions-knowledge, truths ascertained,
Information and Equity 523
conceptions, and ideas-become, after voluntary communication to others,
free as the air to common use" (International News, 1918).
Finally, there is no question that information, like water, is a heritage
resource. It is the basis and inspiration for artworks, science, culture,
and politics. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to define the concepts of
cultural heritage or cultural property without accounting for the role
that information plays in their designation. For example, the Hague
Convention Article I Section (a), the governing international regime for
the disposition of cultural heritage properties, imputes intangible but
expressible significance to such properties. It thus suggests that the protection
and preservation of cultural heritage property in fact preserves
an intangible, informational interest (Hague Convention, 1954).
The Horizontal Perspective:
The Digital Divide and Intellectual Property
Considering all the various streams of research that have informed
the horizontal perspective, it is perhaps unsurprising that scholars in
this camp take a different view of the extent and significance of the digital
divide. As Haywood (1998, p. 25) has observed about global data networks:
"The world has always been a place of haves and have-nots and
[I] can see no way that internetworking is going to change this very
much."
Lentz (2000) identifies two competing accounts of the digital divide.
One emphasizes computer and Internet consumption and argues that
the divide is disappearing. The other focuses more on continuing barriers
to access and use: "Policy should focus at least as much on the context
and content of technology use as it has thus far on the increased
distribution of computing resources" (Lentz, 2000, p. 355). Alexander
Kouzmin (2000, p. 167) agrees that the complex reality of the digital
divide requires a new approach: "There is a need for a new intellectual
paradigm and policy platforms of a dynamic and contingent nature
which address emerging structures created by socioeconomic and technological
changes in highly volatile environments."
Other observers note that despite the rapid dissemination of hardware
and systems, the differences in access and use persist because
training and human support are neglected. Poor and low-status groups
524 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
still have less access to computer networks and online services, but "this
problem might disappear before we can create a presidential commission
to study it ... there is a divide in this country, but it's not digital. It's in
basic academic skills and high-quality schools" (Finneran, 2000, p. 30).
In an analysis of two statewide surveys conducted in 1998, Erik Bucy
found that Internet access was indeed lowest among single mothers,
members of lower socioeconomic groups, and older respondents. Yet, he
argued, "social access" to the Internet is just as important as physical
access to systems: "Beyond the physical hardware needed to go online,
social access to the Internet requires that citizens have the cognitive
ability and technical skills necessary to profit from a complex media
environment" (Bucy, 2000, p. 60).
The structure of information systems, and of the information available
from online sources, is another concern for those who take the horizontal
view. Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (1996) warn against the
"cyberbalkanization" of social groups on the Internet; while Lievrouw
(1998, p. 84) observes that networked computing and telecommunications
allow people to
resort to "our own devices" both in the sense of our personal
agendas, strategies, interests, and interpretations, and of the
ICT tools that help us realize them ... those of us with the
right educational and technological resources [can] avoid
exposure to disagreement, difference, or other information
that does not serve our direct purposes or reflect our individual
views of the world.
Robert Putnam (2000, p. 179) cautions that "the commercial incentives
that currently govern Internet development seem destined to
emphasize individualized entertainment and commerce rather than
community engagement." Social capital cannot be cultivated if we confine
our interactions to exchanges with "people who share precisely our
interests-not just other BMW owners, but owners of BMW 2002s and
perhaps even owners of turbocharged 1973 2002s, regardless of where
they live and what other interests they have and we have" (Putnam,
2000, p. 177). University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein (2001,
p. 201) agrees:
Information and Equity 525
There are serious problems if information is seen as an ordinary
consumer product. The simple reason is that in a system
in which individuals make choices among innumerable
options based only on their private interest, they will fail to
learn about topics and views from which they may not much
benefit, but from which others would gain a great deal.
Given these myriad factors, the National Society of Black Engineers
has developed what is perhaps one of the more comprehensive
approaches to equity policy. The group supports a four-part program of
access, skills, values, and content to help communities employ digital
technology (Institute of Industrial Engineers, 2000). Another advocacy
group, Bridges.org, recently released a report that outlines key factors
essential for "real access," including physical access, relevant content,
sociocultural factors, trust, a supportive legal/regulatory framework,
strong local and macroeconomic environments, and political will
(Bridges.org, 2001).
As these studies indicate, content-and not just the forms or channels
of information-is another critical element of access from the horizontal
viewpoint (McCreadie & Rice, 1999). Some policy researchers have
argued that information service providers (including libraries) cannot
continue to be content-neutral and still provide adequate information
access. This bias toward the "conduit metaphor" (Day, 2000) prevents
libraries and other information services from serving the real needs of
their communities; instead, to provide access, researchers and policy
makers must find out what particular content is considered necessary
for participation in various community contexts (Sawhney, 2000;
Schement, 1995). According to Lievrouw (2000, pp. 155-156), "we should
move beyond the current conduit-centered notion of access in universal
service to a more participatory notion of discourse, which assumes that
some content is essential for social participation."
Content is also implicated in recent debates about the extension of
intellectual property rights to more diverse types of information, and
over longer terms of ownership. Critics warn that information technology
has allowed more and more types of information to be privatized and
thus removed from public access: "Public information is fast being commoditised
and privately held in the commercialization of cyberspace"
526 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
(Stevenson, 2000, p. 3). Indeed, by 1988, Herb and Anita Schiller (1988,
p. 146) had already noted that:
An economic struggle with major cultural implications,
underway for 20 years, and now intensifying, goes relatively
unnoticed in the national media. It pits the fundamental
principle of American libraries-free access to informationagainst
the interests of the private information suppliers and
their advocates in government. The privateers seek profit
from the sale of information to those who have the means to
pay for it.
Only a few years later, Jessica Litman (1994, p. 429) decried what she
saw as an "intellectual property epidemic"; and Pamela Samuelson (1991,
p. 23) identified six features of digital media that were "likely to bring
about significant changes in the [intellectual property] law," including
the ease of replication, ease of transmission and multiple use, plasticity,
equivalence, compactness, and nonlinearity of works in digital form.
In fact, over the last decade the scope and duration of copyright and
patent protections have expanded steadily, due in large part to the development
of technological systems to control access and duplication of digital
materials-so-called "anti-circumvention technologies" that
effectively privatize forms of information that were previously difficult
or impractical to own. The Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, the No
Electronic Theft Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the
U.S., and the European Union's database protection legislation (Lessig,
1999a; Lipinski, 1998; Litman, 1994, 2001; Samuelson, 1991, 1994) have
led some to conclude that "attempts to extend legal protection to basic
facts and other public domain information demonstrate that the public
space is slowly [being] reduced" (Lipinski, 1999a, p. 63).
Today, the rapidly expanding horizon of intellectual property claims
has been characterized as a zero-sum "information arms race with multiple
sides battling for larger shares of the global knowledge pool. The
records of scholarly communication, the foundation of an informed
democratic society, are at risk" (Hess & Ostrom, 2001, p. 45). On the
other hand, however, because facts and ideas exist as information
whether they are rendered in material form or not, "members of the
Information and Equity 527
general public commonly find copyright rules implausible, and simply
disbelieve them" (Litman, 2001, p. 29). There is still a popular sense that
"most innovations and inventions are based on ideas that form the common
property of humanity" (Queau, 2000, p. 1).
Discussion and Implications
To summarize, then, in the previous sections we surveyed what we
believe are two general schools of thought regarding studies of information
equity. On one hand, the "vertical" approach tends to view information
as a bundle of tangible, material goods that are exchanged privately
as commodities (i.e., private goods); information technology has made it
possible to privatize and control more types of information than ever
before. A person's information access and use are, to a large extent, determined
by her or his demographic traits, economic resources, and social
status. Therefore, information equity can be best achieved by an even distribution
of resources and technologies across different social groups.
The horizontal school of thought, on the other hand, is more likely to
see information as subjective and context dependent, a community
resource that is nonsubstitutable and necessary for human life, culture,
and heritage (i.e., a public good). The use of technology to extend property
rights to ever more types of information, therefore, threatens access
to and uses of information that are essential for effective social and political
participation. A person's access and use depend mainly on her or his
capacity to understand and benefit from information and information
technology in a particular situation. Information equity, then, is best
achieved by assuring that all individuals have the background and skills
to use information effectively for their particular ends and purposes, and
that essential types of content remain freely available to everyone.
Obviously, there are, always have been, and likely always will be economic,
social, and political inequities. But if equity is a desirable social
goal, both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of access and use must
be considered. The distribution of resources and systems (perhaps
thought of as primary goods) should be complemented by efforts to foster
social and human capital and capacities, and the provision of relevant
content. At a minimum, we propose that five elements or factors
should be considered in any evaluation of information equity.
528 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
The first element is clearly indicated by the decades of studies that
show consistent and enduring disparities in information access and use
between higher and lower socioeconomic groups. Without question, like
other resources, information and information technologies are distributed
unevenly; problems of information access and use are exacerbated
by economic and social disadvantages. As long as information resources
and technologies are distributed primarily on an ability-to-pay, market
basis, these disparities will persist and are likely to grow. Therefore,
continuing efforts must be made to ensure a more even distribution of
information resources in society.
Second, it is equally clear that if people lack the skills and background
to understand or use the information resources that are available,
even the most strictly apportioned distribution of resources is
meaningless. Research and policy must assess people's abilities to use
the resources they have, and provide a wider range of learning opportunities
for those who wish to take advantage of them.
A third factor is related to skills and background. People's capacities
depend a great deal on the values they share, including support of open
information resources, open inquiry, and the norms of social reciprocity
and trust that make information sources credible. Education and training
must incorporate the values that support information seeking, as
well as convey technical skills.
Fourth, the available content must be contextually relevant and meaningful
in people's lives. Some evidence suggests, for example, that a small
but substantial proportion of Intemet users have become "Intemet
dropouts" because they do not find the information online to be useful or
interesting. A similar phenomenon has been observed with certain ethnic
and language groups, including Mrican-Americans (Spooner & Rainie,
2000). Research and policy should be directed to identifYing what is considered
essential information in various communities, and creating conditions
that ensure the wide availability of such information.
Finally, much more needs to be known about the social and life contexts
that shape people's information needs and interests. Certainly, a
great deal of work has been done that investigates the informationseeking
pattems of particular groups, primarily professionals, students,
and academics. But these efforts should be expanded to include more
complex everyday life contexts. These contexts are not stable, and people
Information and Equity 529
may inhabit or move among several contexts simultaneously, so it is critical
to understand how people navigate among contexts, how contexts
affect each other, and any common elements of this movement.
The framework advocated here has several implications for the evolving
field of information studies. First, this approach to information
equity would necessarily expand the domain of research and policy
analysis beyond traditional concerns with the management and distribution
of systems and services. Researchers would also need to investigate
the interests, orientations, practices, and complex social relations
among individuals and social groups to gain a deeper appreciation of
how people obtain, understand, and use information.
Of course, this was the clear agenda behind the paradigm shift in
library and information science in the 1970s described previously
(Dervin & Nilan, 1986). And librarianship has a long tradition of
research and service aimed at developing the skills of information seekers
and library users; for example, various types of literacy or afterschool
programs and services. But we wish to suggest that research and
policy should do more than teach people how to adapt or reframe their
interests to fit existing systems and resources. More basic research is
needed to learn about unconventional, socially based information
resources (social networks, for example), and how to help individuals
and groups design and use resources that better suit whatever people
value doing or being. It requires a creative, flexible approach to hypothesizing
about information needs, uses, and sources that moves beyond
documents and systems to relationships, cultural practices, and how
ideas diffuse in communities.
The second implication is organizational, and to some extent hinges
on the first. Conventional or taken-for-granted organizational forms and
processes should be rethought and redesigned. Experts in urban planning,
organization studies, and economics have identified new organizational
forms, such as informal alliances, information hubs, and network
firms, which take advantage of information technology and infrastructure
as well as the networks of social relations and expertise among individuals
and groups. Such organizations change shape, dissolve,
reconfigure, or reincorporate as circumstances and needs require,
according to the abilities and relationships of the people within them.
Increasingly, libraries, archives, and other types of cultural institutions
530 Annual Review of Information Science and Technology
may need this same kind of flexibility to engage effectively with the communities
they serve.
To some extent, the digital library projects of the last decade were
intended to lay the infrastructure for just such new ways of distributing
and delivering information resources. Networked computing and
telecommunications services promised to free information from geographic
space and organizational "territories," and digital libraries were
meant to take advantage of this dynamic (Borgman, 2000). However, as
the "new economy" bubble has deflated in the 2000s, incumbent institutions
have moved to shore up their traditional prerogatives and controls
over content, markets, infrastructure, regulatory regimes, behavior, and
so on, that they appeared to be losing to small, unconventional challengers
in the 1990s (Putting IT in its place, 2001). Libraries and other
cultural institutions are unlikely to be immune to the current wave of
retrenchment and centralization, and so digital libraries are likely to
remain tied as adjunct or ancillary services of established institutions
(government agencies, educational/research institutions, private firms,
nongovernmental organizations) for the foreseeable future. New
avenues for organizational innovation will be needed.
The third implication ofthe dimensional view of equity has to do with
the nature and training of information professionals. Information studies
must educate information professionals who combine both traditional
technical and organizational skills with an almost anthropological
or sociological sensitivity to social relationships and change. The combination
of vertical and horizontal equity concerns requires that information
professionals develop an ability to interact with diverse individuals
and groups so that they can facilitate, broker, or navigate those groups'
various interests and practices-again, to achieve whatever people may
value doing or being, in whatever contexts and to whatever degree people
consider important. Information practice should include not only
identifying and accessing existing resources, and teaching people to be
"users" of those established resources; it will also require the ability to
recognize and bring into play a heterogeneous range of social, cultural,
and documentary information resources-interpersonal and family networks,
informal links among experts, and sources of local and universal
knowledge.
Information and Equity 531
To conclude, then, the environmental and dimensional approach to
information and social equity builds on a foundation of earlier work, but
is also an attempt to open up new questions and issues for research, policy,
and practice. We hope we have provided a starting point for a new
and fruitful discussion.
Endnotes
!.Although we use the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" in our discussion of information
equity, we do not want to suggest that these aspects are independent
or orthogonal. Indeed, they are necessarily interrelated because one's vertical
opportunities or circumstances may influence one's horizontal interests and
activities, and vice versa. Although we use these terms, we will try to avoid
the problems that led Tilly (1998) to criticize the concepts of horizontal and
vertical social mobility proposed by his teacher, Pitirim Sorokin (1959). Tilly
objects to the labels horizontal and vertical because they suggest that there
are clear steps or ranks in each dimension (Sorokin's social strata); thus creating
a matrix of slots or positions into which individuals can be classified.
Certainly, a number of the "vertical" studies reviewed here do in fact regard
relative social status, and therefore information access and use, in this ranked
or stepwise fashion. But in our view, the two aspects are more continuous and
fluid. We use the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" more as heuristic concepts
than as absolute scales for measurement.
2. We encourage readers to review the previousARISTchapter on equity (Doctor,
1992) for a comprehensive survey of information and equity research prior to
the early 1990s, especially with regard to power and democracy.
3. Although, as Meadow and Yuan (1997) observe, to call information a commodity
simply describes one of its attributes, and not its essential nature.
4. Perhaps the most remarkable attempt to measure information in this sense at
the whole-society level (i.e., the production and consumption of characters,
words, or documents) was made by Japanese researchers between the 1960s
and 1990s, using measures such as the "johoka index" (Ito, 1981) and the "information
activity index" (Kurisaki & Yanagimachi, 1992).
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