Digital Divide in Time of Crisis in Europe: Do the Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Poorer?

The closure of digital gaps is one of the seven pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which aims to lead to «a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth for European Economy. The analysis proposed in this essay investigates the Matthew effect in the context of a social context already heavily affected by the financial crisis. More precisely, we talk about the «absolute Matthew effect» when the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, to the extent that over time the poor are doomed to failure and social exclusion. The «relative Matthew effect», on the other hand, is present when both the rich and the poor are getting richer, but the rich do so at such a higher rate that the gap with the poor keeps widening. One of the possible form of the effect may prevail according to the social context, the historical period, and the geographic area. In the case of ICTs, following the progressive diffusion of technologies, we are witnessing the outcomes of the relative Matthew effect. The hypothesis guiding this work, therefore, is that are witnessing a widening of the existing gaps, with the “poor” suffering a more pronounced process of exclusion from the network society in spite of the generalized increase in ICTs diffusion. That phenomenon can be analyzed both at a micro level, focusing on the individuals, and at a macro level, focusing on the digital divide between countries. We adopt a diachronic macro perspective, comparing the changes in levels of digital exclusion between the different member states of the European Union (EU) starting from 2007, the year preceding the beginning of the economic crisis, until 2014. The chapter is organized as follows: in section 2 the relevant research literature is discussed. In section 3 some methodological issues are presented. In section 4 the main results are summarized. Finally, conclusions and new lines of research are proposed.