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The COVID-19 pandemic globally disrupted education, forcing a shift to remote learning that excludes many learners. This paper examines student perspectives of the changes to their education. In October 2020, students worldwide participated in the Digital Inclusion Challenge, a hackathon-style event hosted by Convergence.Tech, a digital transformation company. Participants described barriers to learning and proposed solutions to increase inclusivity and effectiveness. Using thematic analysis, student-identified barriers and their proposed solutions were coded and explored. Overall, themes of four barriers to digital inclusion in education and themes of six solutions were identified. The findings demonstrate what students value in their education, and what they felt they had lost in the transition to online and remote learning. This research contributes to knowledge on the severe impacts of the loss of in-person learning and explores technological and conceptual innovations ideated by youth. Further, it provides insight into global student experiences in accessing education during the pandemic and offers considerations for future research.

AbstractThere are significant digital inclusion disparities between low‐ and high‐income households across countries. Yet, there is a lack of in‐depth research about the relationship between digital and social participation in low‐income family households, especially in households facing multiple forms of disadvantage and discrimination due to language, cultural or literacy barriers. This article is based on long‐term ethnographic research with low‐income, migrant family households in the most culturally diverse region of Australia—Western Sydney. We find that household digital inclusion is perceived as necessary and important by parents—but also as a burden that has social, financial and emotional dimensions. We also find that a lack of targeted and culturally informed digital and social inclusion services constrain what digital connection can achieve for families. We argue that under these conditions, equitable digital inclusion cannot be achieved.

We live in a world where we are constantly connected to devices (e.g., smartphones, computers, tablets) and are encouraged to go online to find information about most things in society. This constant digital connection provides the means whereby many individuals communicate and exchange social support. For most demographic groups, this results in being online and connected to devices multiple times each day. Older adults have been slower to adopt and use emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs). Their digital divide in comparison to other age groups may not be an accurate representation of their technology use and the reasons for this use. This descriptive study examines this view of digital inclusion by focusing on older adults and their uses of technology. We provide an overview of technology usage by different older adult age groups in the United States using existing national‐level data. We utilize life course and aging theoretical perspectives to help articulate how older adults use a wide variety of ICTs and whether they are constantly connected, and we note that while a constant connection to devices may be normative for younger age groups, this may not, and perhaps should not, be the case for older adults. The article concludes with a discussion of the social construction of digital inclusion and emphasizes the significant variation that exists in this construct, measurement of technology use in large‐scale datasets, and variation in technology use across older adult life course groups.

This article contributes to a better understanding of patterns of social support in relation to digital inequalities. Based on an extensive qualitative study, the diversity of support networks and supports seeking patterns are unveiled. A typology of six patterns of help-seeking is presented and described: the support-deprived, the community-supported, the supported through substitution, the network-supported, the vicarious learners, and the self-supported. The article also critically engages with the often unnuanced academic literature on social support. The research and the typology reveal that the quality of support, as well as the availability of potential or actual support, is not only influenced by socio-economic factors. Rather, the strength of the relationship and the level of intimacy between individuals is an important predictor of support-seeking. As such, this article shows that mechanisms of in/exclusion are highly social, as they entail a diversity of formal and informal support-seeking patterns, which in turn have an important influence on the adoption and use of digital media. The article argues that understanding such mechanisms is rooted in reconciling micro-level interactions to macro-level patterns of inequalities. To show the specificity of social support within digital inequalities research, and to demarcate the concept from definitions of other academic disciplines, the concept of social support for digital inclusion is introduced. It is defined as the aid (emotional, instrumental, and informational) that an individual receives from his/her network in his/her use of digital technologies.

This article thoroughly analyses the Eurostat database on Digital Economy and Society to explore the evolution of the digital skills gaps by gender in the European Union between years 2007 and 2014. It finds that there are slight differences between women and men in the most basic and widespread skills, but they are very significant in the more complex and less generalized tasks. The disparities in this regard have generally decreased but very few points, so they are rather stable over the period. Additionally, those gender gaps are even more marked in the high-educated groups and also relevant among younger cohorts. Contrary to the statements made by the European Commission in its reports, these findings indicate that digital skills gaps by gender are still significant and likely to persist at many levels of society, while 'ICT specialist' profiles are becoming more important for future employment opportunities.

In this thematic issue, we present research from authors who seek to contest, challenge, and reimagine what digital inclusion is and what it might be. Authors present work from understudied vantage points and "hard to reach" terrains, such as communities that remain geographically, technically, socially, economically, and metaphorically "disconnected" - sometimes by choice. Through their attention to the role of intangible factors like relationality, social capital, emotion, sovereignty, and liminality, the articles collectively push against and expand the boundaries of digital inclusion research and practice.

The implications of digital technologies for the transformation of gender relations and identities have been discussed since the early days of the internet. Although gender studies have identified clear gender gaps in terms of digital inclusion as well as potentialities for the transformation of women's subjectivity, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the impact of digitalization in terms of time use from a gender perspective. Public policies have begun to address the digital gender gap, but the incorporation of a gender perspective in digital inclusion programmes which promotes women's emancipation by challenging the gender division of time through use of the internet has been not incorporated in the digital policies agenda. This article aims to provide empirical evidence of the mutual interrelation between the time allocation and digital inclusion from a gender perspective. It considers how gender inequalities in time use shape women's experience of digital inclusion and, at the same time, how digital inclusion promotes the reconfiguration of time in women's everyday lives. Qualitative analysis based on episodic interviews explored the representations and practices of internet use by women in their everyday lives. The sample was made up of 32 women who were digitally included through a lifelong learning programme in Spain and had experienced the effects of the Spanish economic crisis. The article argues that digital inclusion does not automatically lead to a more egalitarian allocation of time use for women, but rather places greater value on women's free time.

Educational inclusion for refugees is increasingly being framed through digital technologies. This is problematically characterised at the macro level by global and national narratives that portray the digital as an external and universal force capable of radical transformation and inclusion, and at the micro level with more nuanced accounts that acknowledge an already‐present political economy of technology of everyday practices of (non)adoption and use. Particularly for refugees, inclusion is further characterised by a persistent liminality with its attendant experiences of transition and tentativeness. Digital inclusion becomes an ongoing act of managing these liminal experiences, noting where barriers exist that stall efforts at further assimilation, and developing practices or workarounds that attempt to move refugees away from the margins of social inclusion. Such management is inherently precarious, and one made even more precarious in digital spaces, where inclusion is increasingly intertwined with systems of control and surveillance. To illustrate this, this article presents findings from a project exploring educational participation by refugee students in Ugandan universities. It notes the subtle tensions that emerge from the expectations of participation in university life, and Ugandan life more broadly, amidst digital structures and narratives that complicate inclusion. In this article, we argue that more nuanced conceptualisations of digital inclusion, ones rooted in liminal experiences, are needed to anchor digital technologies in refugee communities.