About the Authors

Saleem Alhabash is an Assistant Professor of Public Relations and Social Media, jointly appointed by the Department of Advertising and Public Relations and the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. His research focuses on the processes and effects of using new and social media. More specifically, his research untangles the ways in which computer-mediated communication can facilitate persuasion. His research has been published in Computers in Human Behavior, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, New Media and Society, the International Journal of Communication, the Journal of Interactive Advertising, and Mass Communication and Society.

Yossef Arie is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Haifa. He investigates differences and similarities between distinctive social groups in their social networks structure based on communication mediated by mobile phone.

Grant Blank is a Survey Research Fellow at Oxford Internet Institute (OII). He is a sociologist who studies the social and cultural impact of the Internet and other new communication media. He is also interested in cultural sociology, especially reviews and cultural evaluation. He began his career as an independent consultant based in Chicago Illinois specializing in research design, statistical analysis, and database design. He previously taught at American University in Washington, DC. He completed his Ph.D. on the sociology of reviews at the University of Chicago in 1999, and joined OII in 2010. His research interests include: social and cultural impact of the Internet and other new media, quantitative analysis, methodology, cultural sociology, sociology of science and technology, and artificial intelligence.

Brandon Brooks is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media and Information Studies Program within the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research interests are at the intersection of Internet Governance, Communication and Technology, and Civic Engagement. He explores how citizen and government interactions are effected by Internet governance decisions within sociotechnical systems. He is an Instructor of Digital Media Studies at Queens University of Charlotte.

Shelia R. Cotten, a Sociologist, is a Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. She studies technology use across the life course, and the social, educational, and health outcomes of using various technologies. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Her work has been recently published in Computers & Education, Social Science & Medicine, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Family Issues, Journal of Applied Gerontology, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, and Information, Communication, and Society. She and Laura Robinson are the co-editors of the Emerald Series in Media and Communication. In 2013, she won the award for Public Sociology from the Communication and Information Technologies section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA).

William H. Dutton is the Quello Professor of Media and Information Policy in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at MSU, where he serves as Director of the Quello Center. Bill was the first Professor of Internet Studies at the University of Oxford where he was founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute, and a Fellow of Balliol College, and a Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School at USC, where he was elected President of the University’s Faculty Senate. He has recently edited the Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies (OUP 2013), four volumes on Politics and the Internet (Routledge 2014), and a reader entitled Society and the Internet, with Mark Graham (OUP 2014).

Inés Evaristo is affiliated with the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú M.A., Open and Distance Learning, National Distance Education University of Spain. B.S. Educational Psychology, PUCP. Evaristo is Researcher and Lecturer on pedagogical practices integrating ICT, video games and digital competences in education. Currently she is a researcher on video games and education at PUCP, and also the Head of Learning Technologies at the Technological University of Peru, http://dta.utp.edu.pe.

Blanca Gordo is a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, CA. She lead a team of researchers and the research evaluation of a Sustainable Broadband Adoption Program, a federally funded Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) project administered by the Department of Commerce’ National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The California Connects Program, administered by the Foundation for California Community Colleges, worked to spread broadband adoption among California’s under-served and disconnected populations in community colleges, public schools, community-based organizations, and libraries (see digitalequality.net). She was also part of the ICSI’s MetaNet project of the Artificial Intelligence Group and a founding member of the Teaching Privacy team of the Audio and Multimedia Group. She was also a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). Previously, she was the Academic Coordinator for the Center for Latino Policy Research (CLPR) at UCB, where she directed public policy initiatives, program development, and the Technology and Development Research Group. She holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, and specializes in contemporary social problems and technology. Her research synthesizes public policy, regional and local economic development, poverty, inequality, technology, organizational and community development, ethnic populations (African American and Latino), demographics, cognitive science, neural linguistics, online privacy, and learning. She writes about the individual and systematic effects of being offline and the structure of potential community-level technology solutions under institutional transformation and social change.

Ellen J. Helsper is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Media and Communications Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interest is in the role of digital media in everyday life of disadvantaged social groups. An important element is the development of a theoretical framework to understand the links between digital and social exclusion based on theories of socio-cultural capital and social identity.

Kuo-Ting Huang is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research interests lie in information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a focus on the effects of virtual environments on learning and education. His current research focuses on the social psychological effects of ICTs on education and health.

Mengtian Jiang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Michigan State University. Her research interests include online persuasion, cyber-security and privacy, and consumer trust. She is interested in understanding how people process and are influenced by online information, with a particular focus on consumer trust.

Robert LaRose is a full Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University where he teaches graduate courses in research methods and theory and serves as Director of the Media and Information Studies Ph.D. program. His research interests are the uses and effects of new media. His current foci are the role of habits in media behavior and the adoption of broadband Internet among vulnerable populations. He is the co-author of a popular introductory textbook, Media Now. He was presented with the Outstanding Article Award for 2011 by the International Communication Association. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Theory and Research from the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.

Christopher McConnell has had an interest in the digital divide since his days as a technology reporter in the late 1990s. He received his Ph.D. in Radio-TV-Film from UT Austin in 2014. As a research fellow at UT Austin, his current interest in digital-inclusion issues is motivated by an interest in public participation online. With the advent in the United States of internet-centered government services such as healthcare.gov and types of community participation that hinge on Internet use such as open data and civic hacking, it is increasingly unclear if members of society who have limited abilities to use the Internet can fully engage with society and the lives of their communities.

Gustavo S. Mesch is a Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Haifa (Israel). His research interests are Internet and social media effects on society, social inequalities in the diffusion and adoption of information and communication technologies, and youth media use and social networks. He served as the Chair of the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Israel Internet Association.

Marina Micheli, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at Milano-Bicocca University. Her research examines the relationship between social stratification and digital media use among young people. She has been involved in several research projects focusing on ICT and education, children or teenagers use of mobile devices and social-network sites, digital skills, and media literacy.

Teresa Nakano is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú M.A. Social and Public Policy, Pompeu Fabra University; M.A. University Policy and Administration, Barcelona University. B.S. Educational Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She is a Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Currently, she is the Head of Directorate of Technical Education Services, Ministry of Education, Peru.

Nora J. Rifon is a full Professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Michigan State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Business, and her M.A. and B.A. in Psychology. Her research interests include consumer privacy and online safety, marketing communications strategies, corporate reputation, sponsorship, and children and media. Her work has been published in Communications of the ACM, New Media and Society, the Journal of Consumer Affairs, the Journal of Advertising, Advances in Consumer Research, Government Information Quarterly, the Journal of Interactive Advertising, and the International Journal of Advertising, and in the proceedings of a variety of international conferences. She has served on the Executive Committee and the Publications Committee of the American Academy of Advertising, and on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Consumer Affairs, and the Journal of Interactive Advertising, and served as consultant to the State of Michigan Office of the Attorney General, private law firms, and the commercial sector.

Laura Robinson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Santa Clara University. She earned her Ph.D. from UCLA where she held a Mellon Fellowship in Latin American Studies and received a Bourse d’Accueil at the École Normale Supérieure. In addition to holding a postdoctoral fellowship on a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation-funded project at the USC Annenberg Center, Robinson has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin. Her research has earned awards from CITASA, AOIR, and NCA IICD. Robinson’s current multi-year study examines digital and informational inequalities. Her other publications explore interaction and identity work, as well as new media in Brazil, France, and the United States. Her website is www.laurarobinson.org

Joseph Straubhaar is the Amon G. Carter Sr., Centennial Professor of Communication, the Associate Director of Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute, and the Director of the Latino and Latin American Media Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He organized a joint ICA-IAMCR conference on the digital divide in 2002 and has organized and edited Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender and the Digital Divide in Austin (University of Texas Press, 2011). His book was based on a decade long project on the digital divide in Austin. His book included historical analysis, tying the issue to segregated schools, to the way in which Austin became a planned technopolis, and to the evolving nature of the technology economy itself. It also feature multi-generational interviewing over time with a series of families to contrast generational, ethnic, and gender experiences. With Sharon Strover, he has conducted state-wide surveys on the digital, and a multi-state project with her and Bob LaRose about rural broadband. He has also worked over the years on the digital divide, ICTs, and development in Brazil.

Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. His research focuses on digital inequality in contemporary society. His awarded (national and international by ICA) doctorate dissertation focused on inequalities caused by different levels of Internet skills among segments in the Dutch population. A book Digital skills, unlocking the information society was published in 2014. Alexander has served as Visiting Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science where he has started working on a project on tangible outcomes of Internet use funded by Oxford University.

Eduardo Villanueva-Mansilla holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a M.A. in Media Studies. Associate Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru’s Department of Communications. His areas of research are the transformation of social and cultural relationships in developing countries as a consequence of the implementation of digital media, with an emphasis on education and cultural consumption, and the policies relating to and the political ramifications of digital media usage in Peru. His website is www.eduardovillanueva.pe