The information regime is mediated by the culture of the electronic device. It is characterized by the control of the deluded citizen through the deployment of freedom, thereby nullifying the core issue of human life: freedom. Through phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology (Heidegger, 2002), this work starts from the world of digital life to direct the interpretation towards digital governance, all of which appears as a hermeneutic horizon the information regime. It is concluded that in this new social order the (...) political and all other orders that arise from interaction are governed by a capitalism of emotions. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of standards being used in the domain of digital cultural heritage with focus on the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard created by the Library of Congress in the United States of America. The process of digitization of cultural heritage requires silo breaking in a number of areas—one area is that of academic disciplines to enable the performance of rich interdisciplinary work. This lays the foundation for the emancipation of the second form of silo which (...) are the silos of knowledge, both traditional and born digital, held in individual institutions, such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Disciplinary silo breaking is the key to unlocking these institutional knowledge silos. Interdisciplinary teams, such as developers and librarians, work together to make the data accessible as open data on the “semantic web”. Description logic is the area of mathematics which underpins many ontology building applications today. Creating these ontologies requires a human–machine symbiosis. Currently in the cultural heritage domain, the institutions’ role is that of provider of this open data to the national aggregator which in turn can make the data available to the trans-European aggregator known as Europeana. Current ingests to the aggregators are in the form of machine readable cataloguing metadata which is limited in the richness it provides to disparate object descriptions. METS can provide this richness. (shrink)

The digital society is reconfiguring the relationships between digital culture and intercultural citizenship in Peru. To understand these connections, it is important to examine thesis reports presented in Peruvian universities. Conceptual mapping is used as a research method, allowing for the identification of emerging thematic connections. The results demonstrate a growing interest in research on digital culture and intercultural citizenship in Peru, as well as the interconnections and gaps that highlight national inequalities. Essentially, the need (...) for public policies that promote digital culture, and an active and participatory intercultural citizenship online is revealed. (shrink)

Devises a theoretical framework to think through the politics of transmission within feminism. It draws upon and develops the work of Bernard Stiegler to create a theoretical apparatus that can analyze the politics of transmission within digital culture.

Over the coming decades, the so-called telematic technologies are destined to grow more and more encompassing in scale and the repercussions they will have on our professional and personal lives will become ever more accentuated. The transformations resulting from the digitization of data have already profoundly modified a great many of the activities of human life and exercise significant influence on the way we design, draw up, store and send documents, as well as on the means used for locating information (...) in libraries, databases and on the net. These changes are transforming the nature of international communication and are modifying the way in which we carry out research, engage in study, keep our accounts, plan our travel, do our shopping, look after our health, organize our leisure time, undertake wars and so on. The time is not far off when miniaturized digital systems will be installed everywhere - in our homes and offices, in the car, in our pockets or even embedded within the bodies of each one of us. They will help us to keep control over every aspect of our lives and will efficiently and effectively carry out multiple tasks which today we have to devote precious time to. As a consequence, our ways of acting and thinking will be transformed. These new winds of change, which are blowing strongly, are giving birth to a new culture to which the name ‘digital culture’ has been given. It is timely that a study should be made of the different aspects and consequences of this culture, but that this study should not be just undertaken from the point of view of the simple user who quickly embraces the latest successful innovation, in reaction essentially to market forces. The major challenge for this culture resides not so much in the development of even more tiny microchips, faster processors or more refined software, but in the honing of conceptual instruments which will give us the ability to analyse and evaluate the radical changes that this revolution is bringing about and which it will continue to provoke in all of our lives. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the problem of the digital-culture-public-philosophy as a possible response of those philosophers who see the need to face the challenges of the Internet and the visual culture that constitutes an important part of the Internet cultural space. It claims that this type of philosophy would have to, among many other things, modify and broaden philosophers’ traditional mode of communication. It would have to expand its textual, or mainly text-related, communication mode into the (...) aesthetic and visual communication mode. More precisely, philosophers would have to learn how to aestheticize and visualize their ethical narratives by using some digital tools – YouTube clips for example. (shrink)

Today our lives are filled with technology through which we communicate, work, play and even engage with for making meaning. This implies the pervasive presence of digital media as an integral part of our everyday life. Although studies on media are mostly done by sociology and communication students, living in a digital age has significant implications for theological reflections. Despite this being the case there is gap in terms of a religious response to technology. In response to this, (...) the aim of this article is to stimulate theological reflections with regard to living in a digital culture. This is achieved by raising theological questions in the hope that theology could take a proactive role in these discussions. The implications of living in a digital culture are quite vast; therefore, the focus will be limited to how a community is formed and sustained, and the possible implications for the church as community. (shrink)

A translation of the essay ‘On Promethean Shame’ by Günther Anders with a comprehensive introduction and analysis of his work.

This article examines popular cinema’s interactions with digital culture, focusing on cinema and social structure. A product of technological and social developments, digital culture has introduced the creation of cyberspace, the emergence and spread of social media, and the formation of virtual communities. This article focuses on a specific period (1980 – 2010) to examine the evolution in cinema of portrayals of digital culture. The analysis includes four influential films: WarGames (1983, by John Badham), (...) Perfect Blue (1997, by Satoshi Kon), Pulse (2001, by Kiroshi Kurosawa), and Life in a Day (2011, by Kevin Macdonald, Loressa Clisby, and Tegan Bukowski). The article provides a guide to popular cinema's interaction with and use of the possibilities offered by digital culture, revealing how the four selected films reflect digital culture themes. Each film demonstrates different aspects and dynamics of digital culture at a particular time, offering a unique look at that period's social and technological landscape through its portrayal of technological developments, human relations, cultural values, and social norms. Each film evaluates the impact of the digitization process on cinema from different perspectives, depicting how cinema adapts and responds to technological changes. (shrink)

Technophobia is an irrational fear of either technological influence or\ntechnological artifacts. Philosophical interest for technophobia is\nthreefold: epistemological, existential and\nphilosophical-anthropological. In the last five decades, computers have\nchanged in major many areas of human life, including philosophy. The\nauthors have started rendering technophobical issues in philosophy with\nemergence of technophobical objections to each leap forward in\ncommunication medium. Next area of analysis is speculative fiction.\nDetermining the philosophical importance of speculative fiction, authors\noffered an overview of technophobical thesis in some of anthological\nworks.

This article discusses which barriers hamper access to, and participation in, cultural life for members of vulnerable groups, in particular persons belonging to old and new minorities and persons with disabilities in the context of digitization. It then examines what role public authorities can play in addressing and dismantling these barriers. The article adopts a bottom-up approach, in that it is based on a qualitative study, which gives voice to vulnerable groups. The qualitative research involved interviews with different organisations representing, (...) or working with, vulnerable groups in 12 European Union Member States (Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta and Spain). In that regard, the article approaches vulnerability from a distinct conceptual standpoint, identifying vulnerability as a condition caused by structural barriers. On the whole, the article shows that, while digitization of cultural content, goods and services, offers increased opportunities for culture to be democratised and for its consumption by wider and more varied audiences to be enhanced, it also engenders structural barriers and creates additional challenges. Furthermore, while digitisation has ensured more diverse representation in cultural content, vulnerable groups still face stereotypical and negative portrayals within mainstream cultural content. The thematic analysis of the qualitative interviews also captures different dimensions of access to digital cultural and supports the identification of effective policy measures to bridge the ‘digital divide’ and assist in the fulfilment of cultural rights of vulnerable groups. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the qualities of living and learning in digital cultures, the design of digital technologies and the philosophical history that has informed that design. It takes as its critical perspective the field of embodied cognition as it has developed over the last three decades, in concert with emerging neurophysiology and neurocognitive research. From this perspective the paper considers cognitive, neurological and physiological effects that are increasingly becoming noticed in user populations, especially young populations. I call (...) this class of conditions ‘sensorimotor debility’, to distinguish it from other psychological, social, cultural and political symptoms associated with computer, internet and social media use. (shrink)

In the past two decades digital technologies have fundamentally changed the way we think about, make and use popular music. From the production of multimillion selling pop records to the ubiquitous remix that has become a marker of Web 2.0, the emergence of new music production technologies have had a transformative effect upon 21st Century digital culture. Sonic Technologies examines these issues with a specific focus upon the impact of digitization upon creativity; that is, what musicians, cultural (...) producers and prosumers do. For many, music production has moved out of the professional recording studio and into the home. Using a broad range of examples ranging from experimental electronic music to more mainstream genres, the book examines how contemporary creative practice is shaped by the visual and sonic look and feel of recording technologies such as Digital Audio Workstations. (shrink)

The concept of digital culture defines a set of values, practices, and expectations regarding the format of human interaction in today’s online society. Predictions of digital culture describe the specifics of the online environment and the general context of social life. The range of interpretations of digital culture varies between two poles: from the recognition of digital technologies as a way of presenting libraries, museums, historical monuments, etc., to the concepts of digital (...) culture as a new socio-anthropological reality, the content of which is not limited to ICT. Culture as a phenomenon means the semantic unity of human activity, the desire to format social life following ideas and values, the movement from existing to obligatory, from actual to potential, and digital culture is an adequate response to the demands and challenges. People worldwide change their placement of everyday activity, and we could admit such huge transformation in the Chinese People’s Republic exactly obvious. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Stealth proposes a cultural analysis as well as a political theory of stealth in its various aesthetic articulations.

This book explores the theories of transhumanism and posthumanism, two philosophies that deal with radically changing bodies, minds, and even the nature of humanity itself.

In the so-called digital culture, there is a constant presence of radical transformations on the cognitive and affective dimensions of the relations established among teachers and students. Upon this ubiquitous accessibility of information, the very historical and hierarchically verticalized relation between teachers and students has been increasingly questioned. Upon this situation, the authors in this article aim at stating that the revitalization of concepts developed by Paulo Freire, mainly the ones discussed in the books: ‘Pedagogy of Hope’, that (...) sought a re-encounter with ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, ‘Extension or Communication’ and ‘Pedagogy of Freedom’ became essential to understanding how the relationship between teachers and students can be mutually re-signified. In these times of digital culture, we argue that the revitalization of the critical thinking proposed by Freire is able to foment a dialogical communication both in the pedagogical link shared by teachers and students and in the transformation of information into substantially and ethically experienced concepts. Such substantial and ethical experiences are the ones able to attest that the pedagogy of hope and the pedagogy of freedom are possible, provided they are constituted with the students and not for them. (shrink)

This paper argues that the ‘brain’ has become a frequently invoked and symptomatic source of metaphorical imagery in our current technologically mediated and dominated culture, through which the distinction between the human and the technological has been and continues to be negotiated, particularly in the context of the increasing ubiquity of electronic and digital technologies. This negotiation has thrown up three distinct, though interrelated, figures. One is the ‘Brain in a Vat’, in which the brain can connect to (...) and even operate solely through electronic technologies. Another is the ‘Electronic’ or, more archaically, ‘Giant Brain’, in which the brain’s functions can be reproduced and exceeded by electronic computing technology. A third is the ‘World’ or ‘Global Brain’, in which the connectivity enabled by information–communications technologies produces and fosters forms of distributed intelligence. This paper will trace the development of these figures and show how they have developed in lockstep throughout the two or three centuries of exponentially accelerating technological advance. (shrink)

This is a review of a book which is unique in the history of contemporary ideas --- the authors make explicit the religious imperative in a connected world which is glocal.

Introduction and purpose of the study. The article is focused analyzing the phenomenon of gamification of human being in the context of current changes in digital culture. The author reveals anthropological consequences of this phenomenon. Methods. Methods of scientific research, making it possible to identify and characterize anthropological consequences of digitalization of human being and culture, are philosophical, anthropological and cultural analyses. Scientific novelty of the research. The author describes the virtual form of gamification of human being, (...) presented in digital self-presentation. The author justifies the emergence of a new type of man, Homo mobiludens, for whom virtual reality becomes a simplified form of being, and technical and technological capabilities create the effect of being there. The expanded possibilities of human existence gamification in education and service sector with the beginning of the global Covid-19 pandemic are shown. Conclusions. The gamification of being, combining together managerial, socio-cultural, technological and marketing innovations, streamlines human life risks in a new digital culture. (shrink)

Digital data inundation has far-reaching implications for: disciplinary jurisdiction; the relationship between the academy, commerce and the state; and the very nature of the sociological imagination. Hitherto much of the discussion about these matters has tended to focus on ‘transactional’ data held within large and complex commercial and government databases. This emphasis has been quite understandable – such transactional data does indeed form a crucial part of the informational infrastructures that are now emerging. However, in recent years new sources (...) of data have become available that possess a rather different character. This is data generated in the cultural sphere, not only as a result of routine transactions with various digital media but also as a result of what some would want to view as a shift towards popular cultural forms dominated by processes of what has been termed prosumption. Our analytic focus here is on contemporary prosumption practices, digital technologies, the public life of data and the playful vitality of many of the ‘glossy topics’ that constitute contemporary popular culture. (shrink)

The preoccupation with "depth" and its relevance to cinema and media studies.

A critique and provincialization of Western social science and Global Northern academia by the author of The Digital Coloniality of Power, exposing shared colonial and extractive rationalities and histories of research, higher education, digitalization and bioeconomy while proposing in the idea of BluesCollarship a sketch for an alternative culture of worlding and commoning knowledge work and for making care matter in research and higher education. In a discourse analysis and provincialization of research and higher education, a tradition of (...) elitarian White Collaredness in academia and in the social sciences in general is criticized and an alternative attitude towards the production, transfer and use of knowledge - BluesCollarship - is proposed. The latter is rooted in a different idea of what 'infrastructure' is and in practices of decoloniality. Noting the current political climate of propaganda and populism, the persistence of social inequalities as well as of racism and misogynism, it is proposed that how people give warrant for knowledge claims should be reviewed under different terms. A coherent theme is that there is a genealogical root for current neo-extractive and neo-colonial rationalities in the Athenian idea of oikos conflating family, household, and property. In taking a distinctly writerly approach - rather than giving ready-made answers - the book aims at permanently provoking readers at every turn to think further, as well as before-and-beyond what is written, but to do so in thinking together with Others. Thereby the book addresses scholars and students from across the social sciences who seek challenges to established ways of thinking in academia without simply replacing one canon for merely another. This book is for those who think of themselves as knowledge and cultural laborers in this age of precarization who seek to replace the university and cognitive capitalism with a pluriversity and an infrastructure build on knowledge and culture as fundamental value. (shrink)

Today, the persistence of infantile attitudes into adulthood seems to have become a way of life associated with enjoyment and the renunciation of social obligations. Contemporary society, crossed by the emotional culture of Social Media, favors the example of parents who are friends with their children, of teachers who are enemies of their parents and of young people who are far from authority and traditional morality. Distances between parents and children and between teachers and pupils are eliminated. Today's adolescent (...) is represented with the image of Narcissus because within the affective family he grows up with the idea that success is the goal for achieving happiness and personal satisfaction. What future prospects can you imagine for young people? How to tackle adult frailty? The pedagogical debate could reflect on new educational systems that concern the affective and relational dimension of young people and the orientation skills of adults. By accepting the new needs of young people, adults could carry out that progressive process of affectivity, the acceptance of new educational, affective and relational functions. (shrink)

Tehnofobija je iracionalan strah od utjecaja tehnologije ili tehnoloških artefakata. Filozofski interes za tehnofobiju leži u tri sfere: spoznajnoj, egzistencijalnoj i filozofsko-antropološkoj. U posljednjih pet desetljeća računala su uvelike promijenila i filozofiju. Autori polaze u ocrtavanju problema tehnofobije u filozofiji od pojave tehnofobijskih komentara sa svakim skokom naprijed u sredstvima komunikacije. Sljedeće područje analize je spekulativna fikcija. Utvrdivši značaj spekulativne fikcije za filozofiju, nudi se pregled tehnofobijskih teza u nekim antologijskim djelima spekulativne fikcije.

Digital communication now pervades all spheres of life, creating new possibilities for commodification: personal data and communication are the new resources of surplus value. This in turn brings about a totally new category of threats to privacy. With recourse to the culture industry critique of early critical theory, this article seeks to challenge basic theoretical assumptions held within a liberal account of privacy. It draws the attention to the entanglement of technical and socio-economic transformations and aims at elaborating (...) an alternative framing which takes into account that privacy is not in the first place a pre-political space for individual freedom but a constituted sphere in which social power relations are reproduced in a particularly deceitful way. With recourse to positions of critical theory, this article revisits the conceptual ambiguity of liberation and oppression and looks to draft prospects for a socio-theoretical justification and critique of privacy, updated for the digital age. Following the tradition of critical theory, the argument focuses on (new) forms of domination in and by privacy. It aims to prepare the ground for a critique of the social’s increasing commodification as well as an idea of privacy understood as reflexive participation in social practices. (shrink)

Istanbul is home to a multimillion dollar transnational music industry, which every year produces thousands of digital music recordings, including widely distributed film and television show soundtracks. Today, this centralized industry is responding to a growing global demand for Turkish, Kurdish, and other Anatolian ethnic language productions, and every year, many of its top-selling records incorporate elaborately orchestrated arrangements of rural folksongs. What accounts for the continuing demand for traditional music in local and diasporic markets? How is tradition produced (...) in twenty-first century digital recording studios, and is there a "digital aesthetics" to contemporary recordings of traditional music? -/- In Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul's Recording Studio Culture, author Eliot Bates answers these questions and more with a case study into the contemporary practices of recording traditional music in Istanbul. Bates provides an ethnography of Turkish recording studios, of arrangers and engineers, studio musicianship and digital audio workstation kinesthetics. Digital Traditions investigates the moments when tradition is arranged, and how arrangement is simultaneously a set of technological capabilities, limitations and choices: a form of musical practice that desocializes the ensemble and generates an extended network of social relations, resulting in aesthetic art objects that come to be associated with a range of affective and symbolic meanings. Rich with visual analysis and drawing on Science & Technology Studies theories and methods, Digital Traditions sets a new standard for the study of recorded music. Scholars and general readers of ethnomusicology, Middle Eastern studies, folklore and science and technology studies are sure to find Digital Traditions an essential addition to their library. (shrink)

The extensive use of digital platforms has presented considerable challenges to democracy, particularly in the realms of politics and ideology in Brazil. The emergence of digital echo chambers and the rise of extreme viewpoints pose threats to social cohesion, informed decision-making, and the development of individual identities. This analysis focuses specifically on identity formation, the creation and dissemination of information, emphasizing its repercussions on social identity and cultural diversity. Consequently, the influence of these echo chambers in promoting extremist (...) views in this context is just one facet of the broader ideological, racial, and class polarization facing the nation. To face these challenges, it is imperative to defend critical and reflective education on the role and use of social networks, both in the educational system and in the daily lives of young people and society. (shrink)

Emerging cybertechnologies, such as social digibots, bend epistemological conventions of life and culture already complicated by human and animal relationships. Virtually-augmented niches of machines and organic life promise new free-energy-governed selection of intelligent digital life. These provocative eco-evolutionary contexts demand a theory of (natural and artificial) minds to characterize and validate the immersive social phenomena universally-shaping cultural affordances.

Over the last decade, digitalisation has been a subject of increasing attention among scholars and practitioners. The effect of culture and religion on advertisements, consumerism and marketing, is deniable. The main goal of this research is to present a comprehensive conceptual model based on cultural and religious diversity in digital marketing. This research mainly includes introduction creolisation concept and the elements (religion, music, clothes and custom) as the most important factor in digital advertisement and branding. In this (...) regard, this study examines Instagram consumer products users from five different subcultures in Iran (Lor, Kurdish, Baluch, Arab and Azeri) and considers the impact of creolisation elements on digital advertising, brand identity and brand globalisation. Data were collected by sending 1200 questionnaire via email to subcultures and then analysed using LISREL software.Contribution: The results demonstrated that Islamic religion between participants affects their brand loyalty, therefore the Islamic worth in advertising is necessary. It was suggested that creolisation elements significantly affect digital advertisement, brand identity and brand globalisation. Consequently, all hypotheses were accepted. On the other hand, the impact of brand identity and digital advertisement on the brand globalisation was also confirmed. Discussion and managerial implications concerning creolisation were explained. (shrink)

For several decades Rafael Capurro has been at the forefront of defining the relationship between information and modernity through both phenomenological and ethical formulations. In exploring both of these themes Capurro has re-vivified the transcultural and intercultural expressions of how we bring an understanding of information to bear on scientific knowledge production and intermediation. Capurro has long stressed the need to look deeply into how we contextualize the information problems that scientific society creates for us and to re-incorporate a pragmatic (...) dimension into our response that provides a balance to the cognitive turn in information science. -/- With contributions from 35 scholars from 15 countries, Information Cultures in the Digital Age focuses on the culture and philosophy of information, information ethics, the relationship of information to message, the historic and semiotic understanding of information, the relationship of information to power and the future of information education. This Festschrift seeks to celebrate Rafael Capurro’s important contribution to a global dialogue on how information conceptualisation, use and technology impact human culture and the ethical questions that arise from this dynamic relationship. (shrink)

Indigenous communities have always cultivated social studies learning that is interactive, dynamic, and integrated with traditional knowledges. To confront the assimilative and deculturalizing education that accompanied European settlement of the Americas, Montana has adopted Indian Education for All (IEFA). This case study evaluates the Digital Storywork Partnership (DSP), which strives to advance the goals of IEFA within and beyond the social studies classroom through community-centered research and filmmaking. Results demonstrate the potential for DSP projects to advance culturally revitalizing education, (...) community connectedness, and identity-development. The DSP offers a model for social studies education that is not only culturally affirming and revitalizing for Indigenous communities, but also holds potential for use in all communities. We conclude with recommendations for educators, scholars, and community members engaged in similar efforts. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay follows the recent discourse on two phenomena: the tendency of hegemony to incorporate subversive cultures, and the digital reanimation of prominent dead people. At the intersection of these phenomena lies what we call “cultural necromancy,” a special case of hegemonic incorporation that aesthetically manipulates the physical presence of a deceased figure in the service of power. This essay explores historical analogues to cultural necromancy and how the digital age has accelerated the process through examples ranging from (...) medieval saints to Lenin’s mausoleum to the Tupac hologram. It then examines cultural necromancy’s implications for counterculture and resistance. (shrink)

New technologies provide great opportunities for cultural heritage to become more widely accessible and for cultural experience to be more meaningful. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strengths and vulnerabilities of the cultural heritage sector and the need to accelerate its digital transformation to make the most of the opportunities it provides. The Commission Recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation (2011/711/EU) concluded that there is an urgent need to protect and preserve (...) European cultural heritage, and, in particular, endangered cultural heritage is still present. However, the diversity of legal approaches to cultural heritage by the Member States discourages the creation of a common European data space for cultural heritage as the European Commission recently proclaimed. In Greece, there have been significant efforts in recent decades to digitise and digitally preserve cultural heritage goods. However, the attention was not drew upon the accessibility and reuse of the digitized cultural heritage content. According to the relevant regulatory framework the existing rules on the use of digital technologies for the reproduction, use and preservation of cultural heritage content is obviously outdated. According to the paragraphs 4 and 5 of article 46 of the Greek Code for the protection of antiquities and cultural heritage in general (Law 4858/2021), a previous permission granted by the Ministry of Culture is required for the production, reproduction and dissemination to the public of impressions, copies or depictions of monuments belonging to the Public Sector, or immovable monuments that are located within archaeological sites and historical places or are isolated, or movable monuments that are kept in museums or public collections, in any way and by any means whatsoever, including Information Communication Technologies. Such permission is granted to natural or legal persons for a fee paid to the Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (HOCRED) upon the decision of the Minister of Culture, while the decision also specifies the temporal validity of the permission, the terms on which the permission is granted and the fee that must be paid. The production, reproduction and use of the aforementioned goods for other purposes, such as artistic, educational or scientific purposes, is again allowed for a fee paid to HOCRED, however, the fee can be waived upon the decision of the Minister of Culture. This Paper will examine the existing Greek legal framework and will attempt to propose an appropriate framework that will ensure open access to the digitized cultural heritage assets, enhance the recovery and transformation of the cultural heritage sector and support cultural heritage institutions in becoming more empowered and more resilient in the future. (shrink)

This article reports on a survey of youth in Brussels and their ownership and use of digital technologies, focusing specifically on the social and cultural diversity within this group. Socio-cultural diversity includes differences regarding ethnicity and gender, language and educational attainment, as well as social and economic status. The relationship of these socio-cultural differences with the digital divide in terms of ownership and use is investigated. The data show a persistent ownership divide between socially weaker versus stronger groups (...) accompanied by an emerging socially compensatory function of instrumentally oriented user profiles among the socially weaker groups. (shrink)