Digital Divide and Digital Citizenship: Adapting the Social Policies to Promote e-Inclusion

Technology is one of the most significant facets of globalisation because extending Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into practically all areas of today's society is fundamental to this process. The digital divide, both between countries and within them, merely demonstrates the new social inequalities being generated by globalisation. This is why it is one of the principle problems facing the different levels of government in Welfare capitalism, from local governments to the supranational governments, as awareness and use of ICTs provide opportunities for social integration and necessarily extend the conception of the citizenship as "digital citizenship". The adaptation of the social policies to this new context required by "capitalist" globalisation is essential in order to make the entire population digitally literate and, particularly, those population groups which are vulnerable or face social exclusion. European, state, regional and local initiatives have all addressed digital inclusion by promoting digital training for the entire population through ad hoc public centres distributed throughout the territory. However, the methods used for the digital inclusion of the most socially vulnerable groups seem to be residual in nature and under the initiative of non-governmental organisations, as seen by the exploratory research presented in this paper.