Digital Divide and e-Readiness: Trends and Gaps

2. Research Methodology

This survey is based on a study of digital divide and e-readiness articles, conference papers, master’s and doctoral dissertations, textbooks, working papers and other valid and reputable documents. The literature search was based on the descriptors “digital divide” and “e-readiness”. Considering the nature of the research on digital divide and e-readiness, it would be difficult to group the literature under any specific disciplines. The first scholarly papers focusing on digital divide and e-readiness appeared around 1997 (Katz & Aspden, 1997) and were followed by a growing series of publications (Vehovar et al., 2006). However before that date, researchers conducted research in this area not as studies of digital divide and e-readiness but as examinations of factors affecting the development of ICT.

Nowadays digital divide and e-readiness are two of the major concerns of many scientific journals and conferences. However, it was found that no previous study had identified and ranked the published outputs of research on digital divide and e-readiness. Figures 1 and 2 show distribution of articles by journal and year, respectively.

Figure 1.

Distribution of articles by journals

Figure 2.

Distribution of articles by year