Bridging Digital Divides through Digital Media Buses: An Action Research Study on Digital Inclusion in Sweden

Abstract

Strategies and policies to bridge identified and potential digital divides is a core challenge when forming an inclusive and participatory digital democracy and society. In line with the progress and development of digital technologies and applications governments have to address digital divides. This project discusses how social and digital divides have been addressed in a project called "The Digital media bus in Östergötland". This project builds on the library buses that have has been running in the region for long a long time. The libraries in Sweden also have to address digital inclusion and implement strategies towards increased use of and knowledge about information technologies. This analysis builds on an action research approach. The analyse here are focusing on the implementation, project management and how the project has addressed digital inclusion. Finally, we end up discussing the diversity of digital inclusion, elaborating on the meanings of digital divides and digital diversity.

A Digital Society for All? – Meanings, Practices and Policies for Digital Diversity

“…A recent study on immigrants integration and social inclusion in Mexico [16] concludes that "the social context goes well beyond the digital divide and includes additional important factors like extreme poverty and legal vulnerability". We draw similar conclusions when transforming a library bus to a digital media bus and extending the routes to socio-economic weak neighborhoods [24].…”

“…In the early work on digital divides [6] there were also discussions of how to extend access to digital technologies [16,24,26]. Digital inclusion refers to the need to work with strategies and policies to close the digital divide, and increase digital literacy in order to achieve digitally included citizens.…”

‘It is unbelievable how many come to us’:

“…In exploring new practices for digital inclusion, we have started out with an open field study inspired by an inductivist approach (Eisenhardt, 1989;Yin, 2009). Responding to a call from a municipality in Östergötland, Sweden, to evaluate their digital inclusion practices, the field study was designed as an actionresearch project on digital media buses to be able to bridge knowledge to practice (Wihlborg & Engstrom, 2017).…”

“…Digital inclusion is emphasized and prioritized also in the action plan of the regional library cooperative (Region Östergötland, 2016). Some examples of development projects are digital media buses, Crossmedia and Media-and information knowledge (Wihlborg & Engstrom, 2017). These three projects aimed to both increase the inhabitant's digital inclusion but also to increase the librarians own digital competence and develop different methods for how the library itself can work with digital inclusion in their own municipality.…”