In this article, we argue that new kinds of risk are emerging with the COVID-19 virus, and that these risks are unequally distributed. As we expose to view, digital inequalities and social inequalities are rendering certain subgroups significantly more vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19. Vulnerable populations bearing disproportionate risks include the social isolated, older adults, penal system subjects, digitally disadvantaged students, gig workers, and last-mile workers. Therefore, we map out the intersection between COVID-19 risk factors and digital inequalities on each of these populations in order to examine how the digitally resourced have additional tools to mitigate some of the risks associated with the pandemic. We shed light on how the ongoing pandemic is deepening key axes of social differentiation, which were previously occluded from view. These newly manifested forms of social differentiation can be conceived along several related dimensions. At their most general and abstract, these risks have to do with the capacity individuals have to control the risk of pathogen exposure. In order to fully manage exposure risk, individuals must control their physical environment to the greatest extent possible in order to prevent contact with potentially compromised physical spaces. In addition, they must control their social interactional environment to the greatest extent possible in order to minimize their contacts with potentially infected individuals. All else equal, those individuals who exercise more control over their exposure risk — on the basis of their control over their physical and social interactional environments — stand a better chance of staying healthy than those individuals who cannot manage exposure risk. Individuals therefore vary in terms of what we call their COVID-19 exposure risk profile (CERPs). CERPs hinge on preexisting forms of social differentiation such as socioeconomic status, as individuals with more economic resources at their disposal can better insulate themselves from exposure risk. Alongside socioeconomic status, one of the key forms of social differentiation connected with CERPs is digital (dis)advantage. Ceteris paribus, individuals who can more effectively digitize key parts of their lives enjoy better CERPs than individuals who cannot digitize these life realms. Therefore we believe that digital inequalities are directly and increasingly related to both life-or-death exposure to COVID-19, as well as excess deaths attributable to the larger conditions generated by the pandemic.

As the Internet penetration in the United States increases, many digital divide researchers have delved into the parent–child dynamics regarding family digital access and use. However, little attention has been paid to digital parenting in terms of monitoring, guiding, and regulating children’s digital lives, especially in the context of disadvantaged communities. As an initial step to fill the critical gaps in related literature, this study casts light on factors that affect the self-efficacy of digital parenting in disadvantaged urban communities. Using a census survey of public housing households in one of the largest public housing authorities in the United States, we found that single motherhood and home Internet access significantly accounted for low–socioeconomic status parents’ digital parenting self-efficacy. We also found that parental engagement in children’s school activities strongly affected their digital parenting self-efficacy. By contrast, we found that other sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors (i.e., gender, education, race/ethnicity), mobile Internet access, parents’ homework help, and educational expectation fail to be contributing factors.

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Privacy has become a crucial issue of the digital age, with significant social, political, and economic ramifications. A growing body of literature has dedicated to the patterns, causes, and consequences of individuals’ privacy concerns, skills, and practices. Advancing a producer’s perspective, this research draws on in-depth interviews with 45 tech entrepreneurs to examine privacy practices of mobile start-ups in the United States. Results reveal (a) factors that contribute to the problematic status of privacy issues and (b) whether and how entrepreneurs leverage privacy management as a competitive advantage. Results show that data are widely seen by entrepreneurs as a potentially profitable asset. Privacy practices are networked and thus pose challenges for privacy management as different parties may have different privacy practices. Fast-moving technologies often leave government regulations behind, making them look outdated or irrelevant to many entrepreneurs. For most start-ups not specialized in identity, privacy, or anonymity service, privacy is neither a core business strategy nor a top concern. Only a few mobile ventures have leveraged privacy management as a competitive advantage and designed their products from the ground up concerned about privacy. Most entrepreneurs adopt a building-the-plane-while-flying-it approach: as business grows, privacy policies and practices would evolve. Many entrepreneurs fail to recognize the significance of privacy policies and practices as they lack the awareness, bandwidth, and capacity. Growth and monetization pressures from investors are perceived as more urgent and important than privacy and security issues. Offering a richer account of the power structure that shapes mobile entrepreneurs’ privacy practices and their challenges of managing privacy in a data-driven digital economy, our work advances the existing literature dominated by stories of the individual consumers.

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Porto Alegre, v. 22, n. 4, outubro, novembro e dezembro de 2015. RESUMOO neologismo phubbing, junção de palavras que remetem às atividades mediadas pelo telefone e efeitos de desprezo, fornece imperativos para acentuar a percepção ubíqua de ser aborrecido, ignorado e ofendido em razão de um dispositivo móvel presente em situações de interação pessoal. Seu sintomático registro acompanha importantes descobertas sobre a difusão de mídias móveis em países em desenvolvimento, em cujos jovens são os grupos sociais mais ativos nesse cenário.Incorporando e relacionando a teoria do deslocamento da mídia, focamo-nos na análise de um questionário sobre jovens brasileiros e chineses, identificando como compreendem e lidam com as tensões entre as mídias móveis e a interação face-a-face. Os resultados podem contribuir com novas nuances a discussão sobre deslocamento da mídia.Palavras-chave: Phubbing. Deslocamento da mídia. Mídias móveis. ABSTRACTThe neologism of phubbing, a coalesce of phone mediated activities and snubbing effects, caters to the public's imperative to accentuate the ubiquitous perception of being annoyed, disregard, and offended in light of phone's presence in co-present situation. Its symptomatic recordaccompanies important achievements of diffusing mobile media in developing countries, in which young people are one of the most active social groups in this scenario. By incorporating and relating to the theories of media displacement, we focus on the analysis of a Brazilian and Chinese young people survey, pinpointing how they understand and cope with the tensions between mobile media and face-to-face interaction. The results might provide new tissues to the discussions on media displacement.

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