Rethinking digital inclusion and exclusion in the new media practices of older Australians

• In Event: Caring across Borders: Materiality and Belonging in Transnational Families II

Abstract

There is growing scholarly interest in the ways the elderly are using new media technologies in their everyday lives. This interest has primarily been framed by a goal of enhancing and increasing the social inclusion of the elderly in their existing family and friendship networks, as well as in public life. Old age can be a time of increased vulnerability to social isolation and social exclusion. Hence, digital and online technologies may offer a potential way to mitigate these problems by breaking down spatial, temporal and physical constraints, and facilitating new opportunities for communication and connection. However, while keeping with the thrust of this goal, this paper presents research findings which challenge any simple conflation of digital exclusion with disadvantage or deprivilegeing. Drawing on qualitative interviews which explore themes of social support and technology use in the past and present lives of older Australians, this paper develops a nuanced discussion of the structural, cultural and material obstacles to their engagement with new communication technologies. Particular attention is paid to the agency older people exercise over managing their use of new media technologies, sometimes including their choice to exclude themselves from digital communication out of a preference for physical co-presence. Digital inclusion and exclusion must therefore be conceptualized as processes which occur in a feedback dynamic with other processes of social inclusion and exclusion. This paper is part of the ARC Discovery Project Ageing and New Media, led by Baldassar and Wilding.

Author

• Andrew Simon Gilbert, La Trobe University