Title:	NON-USE AND NON-USERS OF THE INTERNET IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: A CASE STUDY OF INDICATORS IN NATIONAL SAMPLE SURVEYS IN BRAZIL, MEXICO, AND COLOMBIA
Author(s):	Guilherme Alves da Silva and Leonelo Dell Anhol Almeida
ISBN:	978-989-8533-99-9
Editors:	Piet Kommers, Adriana Backx Noronha Viana, Theodora Issa, Pedro Isaías and Tomayess Issa
Year:	2020
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Internet Non-User, Internet Non-Use, Digital Inclusion, Digital Divide, ICT Indicators
Type:	Full
First Page:	19
Last Page:	26
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Discussions around the digital divide and digital inclusion have been of interest to many scholars since the 1990s and address various approaches to social inequality related to the inequality of access, use and/or appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies. It is still common among policymakers, however, to find a prevalence of proposals concerning access only. Recently authors in Human-Computer Interaction studies have proposed the study of non-use of technology and, particularly, of the Internet, as a phenomenon, not only a phase of technology dissemination. They argue that studying non-use would enable researchers and policymakers to understand how people engage or disengage with technologies, avoiding rhetoric of compulsory use. In this paper, we take this approach to analyze national sample surveys carried out in the three most populated countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia). We seek to identify indicators related to non-use present in the surveys and analyze them, proposing a wider view on the phenomenon based on the literature about the subject. We find that although the surveys do have indicators to understand reasons for non-use of the Internet, they lack of deepness particularly considering the need to look at use/non-use beyond a binary equation. We claim that this fact is due to the foundational aspects of those surveys, which are intended to provide data to support public policies oriented to promote access and use of ICTs. At the background of the discussion, we propose that further studies on technology non-use should be done in order to promote a deeper critique of technology determinism.
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