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Access to high-speed Internet is essential for full and consequential participation in the civic, economic, and education systems of modern life. Yet 30% of Californians continue to lack “meaningful Internet access” at home. This digital divide is worse among already disadvantaged communities and prevents rural, lower-income, and disabled individuals from fully participating in the civic, economic, and education systems of life in 2018. This chapter establishes the magnitude of the digital divide, examines the factors that contribute to the Divide, and looks at which groups are most affected. Successful government programs that invested in utility infrastructure and adoption, such as the Rural Electrification Act, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and the California Advanced Services Fund, are examined to provide a foundation for broadband specific policy recommendations. The chapter sets up a framework for policy recommendations by segmenting the population based upon the concepts of material and motivational access and establishing meaningful Internet access as the goal for policy-makers. The chapter puts forth a number of specific policy recommendations to address the technological disparity and prevent it from furthering the economic and educational divides.

Grounded in Media System Dependency theory, this work investigates the impact of new media on political efficacy. It suggests that dependence on online resources affects people’s perceptions about the democratic potential of the Internet. Using structural equation modeling, the study tests the relationship between political attitudes and the perceived utility of the Web. The analysis employs measures that take into consideration the facilitating role of communication technologies. Results indicate that online political efficacy is associated with individual views about the comprehensiveness and credibility of new media. Efficacy is also linked to the perceived ability of online tools to aid the maintenance of ideologically homogenous social networks. The intensity of Internet dependency relations is found to be predicted by the perceived comprehensiveness – but not credibility – of online news.

This chapter analyzes the link between the digital divide, infrastructure regulation, and disaster planning and relief through a case study of the flood in San Jose, California triggered by the Anderson dam’s overtopping in February 2017 and an examination of communication failures during the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California. This chapter theorizes that regulatory decisions construct social and disaster vulnerability. Rooted in the Whole Community approach to disaster planning and relief espoused by the United Nations and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, this chapter calls for leadership to end the digital divide. It highlights the imperative of understanding community information needs and argues for linking strategies to close the digital divide with infrastructure and emergency planning. As the Internet’s integration into society increases, the digital divide diminishes access to societal resources including disaster aid, and exacerbates wildfire, flood, pandemic, and other risks. To mitigate climate change, climate-induced disaster, protect access to social services and the economy, and safeguard democracy, it argues for digital inclusion strategies as a centerpiece of community-centered infrastructure regulation and disaster relief.

This study examines the implementation of a community-level Sustainable Broadband Adoption Program (SBA) under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), a national public policy program meant to expand broadband deployment and adoption under the American Recovery Act of 2009, and administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The California Connects Program (CC) was administered by the Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC).

This chapter focuses on one part of CC’s efforts to expand broadband adoption among the most underserved Californians through collaboration with the Great Valley Center (GVC). CC-GVC provided basic computer and Internet classes to disconnected populations with low-literacy levels, and primarily in Spanish, through community-based organizations, public schools, public libraries, small businesses, and others in the Central Valley, an 18 county rural region with a high concentration of digital destitute populations. The program worked with under-resourced local community institutions with a range of poor technology resources and that operated under variable set of social, economic, political, and institutional conditions. Through inductive, process-oriented, and explanatory case study research, the structure, strategy, and training approach of CC was examined. Content and theme analysis of primary and secondary qualitative and quantitative data involving the program’s leadership, direct service providers, partners, participants, and nonparticipants was conducted. This involved a sample of 600 in-depth and short, structured and unstructured interviews and focus groups, archival and participant observation notes.

It was found that CC-GVC was able to meet uncertainty and operated with low institutional resources and paucity of linguistically appropriate teaching resources for new entrants through a flexible leadership approach that adapted to the social situation and was open to innovation. Community technology trainers were also able to engage those without or little direct experience with computers and with low-literacy levels with a linguistically appropriate and culturally sensitive step-by-step teaching approach that empowered and met people where they are. The author expands non-adoption models to include structural barriers in the analysis of the disconnected. It is argued that non-adoption is a result of evolving inequality processes fueled by poverty and under-resourced community development institutions and that teaching and learning is a social and institutional process that takes trust and time.

CC shows that even the most disadvantaged can be empowered to learn-to-learn to use computers and can begin to function online and gain benefit under the most extreme institutional and economic conditions, but it takes more time and resources than providers expected and the Recovery Act provided.

American tourism is largely affected by the ability and ease with which one can travel to a tourist destination. Information availability, utility, and value of information on websites are essential in choosing and planning a vacation or business trip. This study compares visa and nonvisa tourist destinations as they relate to American tourism and business travel. Each destination's internet website quality, quantity, and utility are compared through an evaluation rubric with 36 attributes. Four countries are considered to provide two countries in each category of visa required and nonvisa required. The marketing mediums compared are the government run websites and Lonely Planet's private sector version. The first proposition is that countries that require visas lack the quality and quantity in internet marketing in comparison to those countries that do not require a visa. The second proposition is that the government run websites are comprehensive in detailing information in comparison to privately created websites. The eight complete rubrics achieve a comparison that is comprehensive demonstrating variability in quality and information available. The third proposition addresses is the fact that the quality of the government run websites relates strongly to the overall web presence and periodical existence of that particular countries’ tourist destination literature. This chapter is unique and valuable to those considering travel to a visa-required destination but the theories demonstrated highlight the deficiencies of private sector websites and the fast pace growth of internet tourism marketing.

This chapter presents a summary of the literature on the influence of the Internet and other digital innovations on markets, consumers, and firms. The review leads to a list of topics in need of research in the general areas of big data, online and mobile advertising, consumer search, online privacy, online reviews, social networks, platforms for online transactions, and the impact of the Internet on retail markets, including multi-channel and omni-channel retailing. We discuss the big data approaches that have been applied to problems of targeting and positioning and suggest areas for further development of these approaches. We also discuss the emerging area of mobile advertising, which can further enhance targeting. On the consumer side, the evidence indicates that the Internet has greatly lowered the costs of search and access to retailers. Much of the consumer data are transmitted to sellers, and much of the online advertising is transmitted to consumers, through platforms, such as Google. We conclude that better models of competition among these platform firms are needed and that they need to be examined for anti-trust violations. While online retailing has grown rapidly, it still has a relatively small share of retail sales. Since sellers can combine the advantages of online and offline channels, it has been common for sellers to branch into multi-channel retailing. Given the increased availability of detailed consumer data, omni-channel selling, which emphasizes strategies for the various touchpoints that lead to a transaction, is an area for further development.