Digital Inequality, Education Heterogeneity and Human Rights. The Conectar Igualdad Programme in rural and urban working-class schools of Salta (Argentina)

GARCÍA VARGAS, ALEJANDRA; CHACHAGUA, MARÍA ROSA; GOLOVANEVSKY, LAURA

Madrid

Conferencia; 2019 Edition of the International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference; 2019

Universidad Complutense de Madrid / IAMCR

Does the level of promotion and protection of education -as part of human rights and dignity- have any relation to the level of technological development of the society? Is there any correlation between digital inequalities and social inequalities when it comes to the rights to education in social and geographical marginalised areas? This paper bridges both questions in order to answer them via quantitative and qualitative data referred to a specific context and on a specific educative policy: the Conectar Igualdad Programme (CIP) as a social policy applied in an urban and a rural secondary school located in Salta (Argentina).In this way, this case study allows us to generate evidence on digital-inequality issues facing adolescent citizens among social and geographical marginalized communities; and promotes evidence- informed policy change for the improvement of the access, the use, and the implementation of ICTs for educational, social and cultural development (van Dijk, 2005).Both in Latin America and in Argentina, inequality is a historical and severe structural condition (Kessler, 2010). In turn, the social uses of technology constitute an important field of debate in the area, and the technological equity conditions during childhood and adolescence are part of most of the political and educational agendas (Becerra, 2015; Morales, 2015; Reygadas 2008; Rivoir, 2009). We ask ourselves: What features does inequality acquire when questions are asked on the grounds of educational policies aimed at digital equity from a human rights perspective? To what extent is technological inequity part of wide and historical geographies of social inclusion/exclusion? How do digital inequalities relate with the public educational system and to what extent do they impact on the living conditions of the youth in diverse Latin American contexts? First we work with comparative public statistical information, which allows us to address the presence/absence of various technological devices in Argentine households, pointing out the differences between regions and specifying the situation for the province of Salta. Said statistical information is combined with an inclusive approach on the role, the valuation and the differential use of technologies according to contexts, regions and diverse socio-economic conditions.Our analysis indicates that CIP seem to have had a relevant impact in the educational system, though differences persist between sectors of different income levels and of rural or urban localizations. Positive variations indicate the extent to which public policies may positively influence the reduction of the material dimension of access. Fieldwork indicates that, even if the digital gap is narrower among the youth than among older-age groups, and among male students than among female students, it persists. Furthermore, the analysis shows that there are regions and sectors which remain disconnected, that there are digital services that are only accessed by the most favoured sectors, and that this disconnection has a growing weight in the general configuration of social inequality in Salta. Thus, the availability of a specific device incipiently reduces the structural fragmentation between incipiently connected and disconnected people, while it neither solves the connectivity issue nor those issues derived from digital literacy processes and the social uses of such technologies.