Politics and the Digital Divide.

Social media and the internet are becoming widely used for politics and political campaigning. When used effectively, politicians are able to gain a wider audience to their sides of the debate. However, minority groups are being left out when it comes to politics and the internet, minority people such as the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders communities and people living in remote and secluded areas are being lost in a digital age. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 3% of Australia’s population (Korf 2012).

Indigenous people who live in remote and secluded areas lack access to the internet (NACCHO 2013). Without the internet, the indigenous people of these remote areas miss key election news, election information and probably do not know whom to vote for when it comes to election time. Most of these people would have to wait for ads on the television and rely on radio broadcasts and newspaper articles.

 

If politicians want to be accessible and reachable to everyone in Australia, they need to bridge the digital divide. The digital divide is a term used to describe “the social division between those who are using technology and those who are not” (Sevron 2002, p. 24). A 2007 report by the Australian Bureau of statistics showed that Indigenous people were 69% less likely than the majority of the Australian population to have an internet connection and 52% less likely to have access to broadband internet (NACCHO 2013, P.5). If 69% of Indigenous people are less likely to have internet connections, it is highly likely that this demographic of people are missing key election information that they could be getting off the internet and social media sites.

In my opinion, this divide needs to be bridged so that everyone in Australia can have equal access to the internet and services provided on the internet. As Jenkins once, stated education of media “becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (Jenkins 2013, p.2).

References 

Bird, S. n.d, ‘Indigenous Communities [Image]’, accessed 16 January 2014,

< http://www.sharonbird.com.au/indigenouscommunities>. 

Jenkins, H. 2013, ‘Rethinking ‘Rethinking convergence/ Culture’’, Cultural Studies, vol. 25, no.4-5, pp.1-31. 

Korf, J. 2013, ‘Aboriginal Population in Australia’, Creative Spirits, accessed 16 January 2014, < http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/aboriginal-population-in-australia>.

NACCHO 2013, ‘ Issues Surrounding Cyber –Safety for Indigenous Australians’,  The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety, accessed 16 January 2014, < http://www.naccho.org.au/download/aboriginal-health/Issues%20Surrounding%20Cyber-Safety%20for%20Indigenous%20Australians.pdf>. 

Sevron, L.J. 2002, ‘The dimensions of the digital divide’, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Massachusetts.