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An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries

The extension of remote forms of employment, education and communication during the Covid-19 pandemic was expected to bridge the digital divide in 2020. However, more digitally developed countries have shown a reduction of Internet use. This article examines the changes in Internet use in 2020 as th...

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Autor principal: Natalia, Grishchenko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35813394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2022.101856
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author Natalia, Grishchenko
author_facet Natalia, Grishchenko
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description The extension of remote forms of employment, education and communication during the Covid-19 pandemic was expected to bridge the digital divide in 2020. However, more digitally developed countries have shown a reduction of Internet use. This article examines the changes in Internet use in 2020 as the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic focused on cross-country digital development. We use a random effects regression model to assess the relationship between Internet use as an indicator of digital divide and digital development on the macro, business, infrastructural, and individual levels in EU countries. Panel data from Eurostat for 2014–2020 are applied. We found that more digitally developed EU countries, including Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, show a higher relationship between Internet usage and digital performance than other EU countries. These countries saw a decrease in Internet use during 2020, which is contrary to the general trend of either increasing or unchanging Internet use in the case of social distancing restrictions and lockdowns. High digital dependence in more digitally developed countries, and in some other EU countries in the context of a pandemic as a crisis, has led to a reduction in Internet use due to the vulnerability of digitalized industries, enterprises, jobs and personal patterns that may identify the new challenge as inverted digital divide.
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spelling pubmed-92501562022-07-05 An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries Natalia, Grishchenko Telemat Inform Article The extension of remote forms of employment, education and communication during the Covid-19 pandemic was expected to bridge the digital divide in 2020. However, more digitally developed countries have shown a reduction of Internet use. This article examines the changes in Internet use in 2020 as the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic focused on cross-country digital development. We use a random effects regression model to assess the relationship between Internet use as an indicator of digital divide and digital development on the macro, business, infrastructural, and individual levels in EU countries. Panel data from Eurostat for 2014–2020 are applied. We found that more digitally developed EU countries, including Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, show a higher relationship between Internet usage and digital performance than other EU countries. These countries saw a decrease in Internet use during 2020, which is contrary to the general trend of either increasing or unchanging Internet use in the case of social distancing restrictions and lockdowns. High digital dependence in more digitally developed countries, and in some other EU countries in the context of a pandemic as a crisis, has led to a reduction in Internet use due to the vulnerability of digitalized industries, enterprises, jobs and personal patterns that may identify the new challenge as inverted digital divide. Elsevier Ltd. 2022-08 2022-07-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9250156/ /pubmed/35813394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2022.101856 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Natalia, Grishchenko
An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title_full An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title_fullStr An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title_full_unstemmed An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title_short An inverted digital divide during Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from a panel of EU countries
title_sort inverted digital divide during covid-19 pandemic? evidence from a panel of eu countries
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9250156/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35813394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2022.101856
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