Abstract

Reducing the digital divide is often considered as a major political matter in the digital economy. In fact, that very huge blurred notion encompasses many different questions mixing social, economic, and spatial dimensions. However, it proves to be insufficiently defined from a conceptual perspective. Our paper tries to fill this gap by exploring the very impact of ICTs on inequalities. It is organised in three major sections. The first one makes a critical survey of the various existing approaches and measures of the digital divide. The second major section addresses the specific issues of the geographical side of the digital divide through the impact of the geographical concentration of ICTs industries and the spatial discrimination by telecommunication networks. The last section suggests three main research issues beyond the digital divide rhetoric, that is (1) The respective role of market and public policies to reduce the divide; (2) The irrelevance of the sole access/use dimensions; (3) The need for giving up the idea of one single (American) universal model and then for substituting the concept of differentiated trajectories of diffusion for the notion of "backwardness".

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