Needing NoDI (normal democratic information)? The problem of information poverty in post-industrial society

The paper addresses one of the main paradoxes of post-industrial society: information poverty. While digital divides of various types have been extensively theorized and researched, the actual condition of the information poor – those at the wrong end of socioeconomic information-divides – has not received sufficient attention. Yet if advanced nations have ‘informatized’ and thus become, at least in some measure, information societies, the plight of those lacking the definitive resource ought surely to be high on academic and political agendas. The article reviews the scattered multidisciplinary literature on the condition, confirming the iron link between economic poverty and information poverty, while also registering cultural and behavioural dimensions. Building on such work, a focused, up-to-date and, it is believed, original conception is able to be introduced, namely, information poverty as a deficiency in certain taken-for-granted categories of political and cognate information, or normal democratic information (NoDI). The new construct is then trialled in the field, among a sample of severely disadvantaged men in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. The informants are indeed found to be, by and large, wanting in these key categories of information, an epistemic pathology that reflects and reinforces their material malaise. The article concludes that the ‘option for the poor’ – the political duty of care for the worst off – in the twenty-first century demands new modes of State action to combat an acute and increasingly salient social problem

Religion and spaces of technology: Constructing and contesting nation, transnation, and place

10.1068/a37215Environment and Planning A385903-91

Reforming policy to promote local broadband networks

Most existing assessments of local Wi-Fi projects have concentrated on either top-down, government-driven endeavors, or bottom-up projects developed by volunteers or community organizations. In both Canada and the United States, existing local Wi-Fi projects—both top down and bottom up—have failed to fulfill expectations that they could increase digital inclusion. Current policy frameworks may play some role in these failures. This article argues for a policy approach that favors hybrid public broadband that is neither completely bottom up nor top down, and for the development of policy frameworks that support hybrid public broadband