[Air-L] Book announcement: Enhancing Digital Equity. Connecting the Digital Underclass” (Palgrave)

[Massimo Ragnedda]

Apologies for cross-posting



Dear colleagues, I’m delighted to announce that my latest book
“Enhancing Digital
Equity. Connecting the Digital Underclass” (Palgrave) is published.



For a free preview https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030490782



*Here’s the blurb*

This book highlights how, in principle, digital technologies present an
opportunity to reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance
social and civil rights, and promote equity. However, to achieve these
goals, it is necessary to promote digital equity and connect the digital
underclass. The book focuses on how the advent of technologies may become a
barrier to social mobility and how, by concentrating resources and wealth
in few hands, the digital revolution is giving rise to the digital
oligarchy, further penalizing the digital underclass.
Socially-disadvantaged people, living at the margins of digital society,
are penalized both in terms of accessing-using-benefits (three levels of
digital divide) but also in understanding-programming-treatment of new
digital technologies (three levels of algorithms divide). The advent and
implementation of tools that rely on algorithms to make decisions has
further penalized specific social categories by normalizing inequalities in
the name of efficiency and rationalization.



*Reviews*



“*The "digital divide" debate needs a radical update for an age of
algorithmic power and intensifying inequality. In this accessible and
well-organised text, Massimo Ragnedda provides this and more, enriching our
understanding of how inequality works today and what digital equity might
mean. Timely and important!”*

(Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory, London
School of Economics and Political Science, UK).



“*Division, exclusion and inequality: these issues have long been the focal
point for social scientific work. In a changing world, we now need to
understand their continuities and reformulations. This sparky and ambitious
book takes on this challenge and produces insights that will be of interest
to anyone who seeks to genuinely understand how the social world works
today.”*

(David Beer, Professor of Sociology, University of York, UK)





______________

*Massimo Ragnedda* <http://northumbria.academia.edu/MassimoRagnedda>

Senior Lecturer in Mass Communication

Squires Building 306f, Northumbria University, NE8 1ST  Newcastle (UK)

Tel: 01912437444

Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Journalism, Lomonosov Moscow State
University <http://www.journ.msu.ru/eng/news/27610/>



*Most recent books*:

Massimo Ragnedda (2020). Enhancing Digital Equity. Connecting the Digital
Underclass <https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030490782#aboutBook>,
Palgrave.

Massimo Ragnedda and Maria Laura Ruiu (2020). Digital Capital. A
Bourdieusian Perspective on the Digital Divide
<https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/Digital-Capital/?k=9781839095535>,
Emerald.

Massimo Ragnedda (2017) *The Third Digital Divide: A Weberian approach to
digital inequalities* <http://bit.ly/2f8FObg>, Routledge.



*Most recent edited books*:

Massimo Ragnedda and Anna Gladkova eds (2020). Digital Inequalities in the
Global South <https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030327057>. Palgrave.

Bruce Mutsvairo and Massimo Ragnedda eds (2019) Mapping the Digital Divide
in Africa. A Mediated Analysis.
<https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789462986855/mapping-the-digital-divide-in-africa>
Amsterdam University Press

Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn Muschert, eds (2018) *Theorizing Digital Divide*
<http://bit.ly/2y9WSLm>, Routledge



Latest articles:

ML Ruiu and M. Ragnedda (2020). Digital capital and online activities: an
empirical analysis of the second level of digital divide
<https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/10855/9568>, First
Monday

Massimo Ragnedda, Maria Laura Ruiu and Felice Addeo (2019), Measuring
Digital Capital: an empirical investigation <http://buff.ly/2zpPiew>, New
Media and Society

Massimo Ragnedda (2018) Conceptualizing Digital Capital
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585318309316?via%3Dihub>,
Telematics and Informatics



Vice chair of Digital Divide Working Group, IAMCR
<https://iamcr.org/s-wg/working-group/DID>

Co-convenor of NINSO (Northumbria Internet and Society Research Group
<https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/academic-departments/northumbria-law-school/law-research/ninso-the-northumbria-internet-and-society-research-interest-group/>
)







-- 

*Massimo Ragnedda* <http://northumbria.academia.edu/MassimoRagnedda>
Senior Lecturer in Mass Communication
Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK)
mragnedda.wordpress.com
skype: massimo.ragnedda

http://northumbria.academia.edu/MassimoRagnedda
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