A STUDY ON THE MEASUREMENT OF &ldquo;DIGITAL DIVIDE&rdquo; OF URBAN VILLAGE RESIDENTS IN BEIJING AND ITS INFLUENCING FACTORS

LIN Wen-sheng; FENG Jian

doi:10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2021.05.009

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HUMAN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2021, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (5) : 63-72. DOI: 10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2021.05.009

SPECIAL ISSUE ON ICT AND URBAN SPACE

A STUDY ON THE MEASUREMENT OF “DIGITAL DIVIDE” OF URBAN VILLAGE RESIDENTS IN BEIJING AND ITS INFLUENCING FACTORS

LIN Wen-sheng, FENG Jian

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Abstract

In recent years, the rapid development of global mobile Internet technology, especially the COVID- 19 epidemic in 2020 has boomed the digital economy industry. "Living on the cloud" and "working through the cloud" have become normal in the pandemic period. Different groups have different opportunities and abilities to use digital resources. The acceleration of digital technology urges scholars to pay more attention to the "Digital Divide" phenomenon and analyze the interaction between "Digital Inequality" and "Social Inequality". Taking five typical urban villages in Beijing as the survey sites, this paper analyzes whether there is a "Digital Divide" between Beijing urban village residents and ordinary urban residents from three aspects of equipment access, network skills and Internet content and how big is this divide:In terms of equipment access, although the proportion of broadband installation of urban village residents is lower than that of urban residents, the Internet traffic and proportion of residents using mobile phones and are close to urban residents and their Internet access cost is lower than the latter. The development of mobile Internet, the popularity of 4G and the rise of China smartphones industry have narrowed the divide in device access between urban village residents and ordinary urban residents. The level of Internet using skills of urban village residents is generally lower than the national average level, but the gap is not obvious. With the improvement of network skills, the deeper the embedding degree of demographic characteristics and socio-economic attributes of urban village residents are, the more obvious the "Information Gap" phenomenon is, which means that the higher the individual's socio-economic status, the more skillfully they can master Internet skills, absorb useful knowledge and avoid Internet traps.

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digital divide / COVID-19 / social inequality / urban residents / social vunerable groups

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LIN Wen-sheng, FENG Jian. A STUDY ON THE MEASUREMENT OF “DIGITAL DIVIDE” OF URBAN VILLAGE RESIDENTS IN BEIJING AND ITS INFLUENCING FACTORS[J]. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 2021, 36(5): 63-72 https://doi.org/10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2021.05.009

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