Our Strategy

The Problem

Our work seeks to address the following digital equity needs and societal challenges.

• Digital equity practitioners and policymakers need high-quality data and evidence to support their everyday work and longer-term goals to advance digital equity and social, economic, and racial justice.
• These data must be informed by those most impacted by digital inequalities, and the groups and organizations who support them, in order to address these social and technical inequities.
• As long as technology evolves there will always be a need for high-quality research, grounded in people’s everyday experiences, to support those most impacted by digital inequalities and to advance social justice.

Over 25 years of research has shown that these persistent challenges call for coordinated efforts across local, state, and national levels informed by communities, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers.

---

Our Approach

The Digital Equity Research Center assumes that digital inequality research must include analyses of economic injustice, systemic racism, and other structural inequalities in order to understand and address the root causes of the digital divide. Our applied research uses critical theoretical insights along with community-based and participatory action research methods to ensure those most impacted by the digital divide are included, whenever possible, in interventions to advance digital equity and social, economic, and racial justice.

We partner with academic institutions, community-based organizations, and philanthropy to produce high-quality, applied research to inform digital equity practice and policy at the local, state, and national levels.

Our Center engages in the following three part strategy to address these problems:

1. Produce High-Quality, Impactful Research – our applied research seeks to contribute new insights to advance digital equity scholarship, which is part of a multidisciplinary field that draws upon insights from library and information science, communication studies, political science, public policy studies, social work, public health, and other related areas.
2. Advance Equity and Social Justice in Digital Equity Practice – we work to ensure that our research can be useful not only to community-based organizations working to center equity in digital equity and justice initiatives, but also to improve the lives of those most impacted by digital and social inequalities.
3. Inform Effective Public Policy – our research seeks to support local, state, and federal policymaking, as our research has been utilized by policymakers to advance digital equity and social justice.

---

Priorities

The Digital Equity Research Center works to pursue this strategy through the following three research areas:

1. Meaningful Broadband Adoption (individuals) – Our research on “meaningful broadband adoption” (Gangadharan & Byrum, 2012) deeply considers the human-to-human, rather than simply the human-to-computer, interactions in community settings that we know are important to individuals and families struggling with the high cost of broadband in the United States. This work seeks to more deeply understand, for example, the ways in which a “sense of comfort” (i.e., support, trust, safety, and respect) is an important precursor to, rather than necessarily an outcome of, people’s ability to gain access to computers and the internet in meaningful ways that reflect their everyday experiences with technology.
2. Public Libraries and Digital Equity (organizations) – Public libraries play a key role in advancing digital equity in communities across the United States and around the world. This role became even more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people were forced to visit public library parking lots where they could access wireless internet service when the library buildings were closed. Libraries of all sizes and types in tribal, rural, suburban, and urban communities serve as anchor institutions particularly for individuals and communities who cannot afford internet service at home. Ongoing research is needed to understand the existing and novel uses of public library spaces to address people’s unequal access to technology and to each another.
3. Digital Equity Ecosystems (communities) – We define digital equity ecosystems as interactions between individuals, populations, communities, and their larger sociotechnical environments that all play a role in shaping the work to advance more equitable access to technology and social, economic, and racial justice. Our research in this area seeks to understand how coalitions in the U.S. have worked to advance healthy digital equity ecosystems, as well as what measurement frameworks and tools they might need to be more effective in measuring the outcomes and impacts of their work. The purpose of this research is to provide data and evidence to help practitioners, philanthropic organizations, and local, state, and federal policymakers develop more effective digital equity strategies, particularly as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration releases billions of dollars in the next five years through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. We hope that the findings from our work will also be useful for key stakeholders working on digital equity initiatives to advance social, economic, and racial justice in communities across the country.

---

Principles

The following four principles guide our work to advance digital equity and social justice.

Asset Based

Our work focuses on the strengths, rather than the deficits, within communities as defined by community members themselves, including those of which we are a part. This approach guides how we listen, examine, and think about whose knowledge matters and why in our research and practice.

Power Aware

We examine the power dynamics and structural inequalities that impact people’s everyday experiences with technology, including how these experiences are shaped in community settings. We work to shift power through our research and practice with those whom we work, as well as within ourselves and our own communities.

Respect Focused

Mutual benefit, care, and respect are essential to our work. Intersectional care ethics challenges us to think more deeply about who gives and who receives care in community spaces, including public libraries and technology centers. This focus helps to surface invisible labor and address structural inequalities within communities, organizations, and institutions.

Justice Centered

We seek to generate new knowledge in support of social, economic, racial, environmental, and other justice-centered goals. The goal of our research and practice is to help create more healthy, vibrant communities while working to address systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of marginalization and oppression in society.

---

Impact

As a result of our work and the strategy implemented, we hope to see the following impacts:

• Individuals are able to access and utilize the social and community supports and technological skills needed to advance their own freedom and self-determination.
• Communities have the power to make decisions about how technology impacts their lives.
• Researchers employ a more just and equitable model that is asset based, power aware, respect focused, and justice centered.
• Practitioners have the knowledge and capacity needed to center and support those most impacted by digital and social inequalities.
• Policymakers have the data and evidence needed to support healthy digital equity ecosystems where individuals, communities, organizations, and institutions are empowered to address ongoing challenges due to technological advancements.