The secular salvation story of the digital divide

Abstract

Despite much discussion of the digital divide, little academic work has directly analyzed the specific political and policy contexts in which the concept is being developed and deployed. This paper undertakes an analysis of one such initiative, the activity of the supranational Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force). The analysis provides a critical discursive analysis of the final report of the DOT Force, together with thick description of the processes by which it was produced. The resolution of numerous antagonisms between the participants in the narrative of the final report reflects the field of power in which the DOT Force operates. The issue of the digital divide can be best understood as providing a generative resource through which the various political interests represented in the DOT Force process can normatively reconfigure the conceptual and ethical possibilities it signifies to renew a dominant, singular `secular salvation story' of the global. The specific closure, articulation and legitimation of the digital divide instantiates an action-oriented temporality and a transformed moral agenda, from a concern with inequality to a pressing inclusionary imperative to connect with the promise of technology and development.