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Title Debunking the 'digital native': beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3334
Date 2010
Author(s) Brown, Cheryl; Czerniewicz, Laura
Abstract This is the accepted version of the following article: Brown, C. & Czerniewicz, L. 2010. Debunking the 'digital native': beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 26(5): 357-369., which has been published in final form at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x. - This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the 'net generation' finding the concept of the 'digital native' especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is not a determining factor in students' digital lives; rather, their familiarity and experience using ICTs is more relevant. We also demonstrate that the notion of a generation of 'digital natives' is inaccurate: those with such attributes are effectively a digital elite. Instead of a new net generation growing up to replace an older analogue generation, there is a deepening digital divide in South Africa characterized not by age but by access and opportunity; indeed, digital apartheid is alive and well. We suggest that the possibility for digital democracy does exist in the form of a mobile society which is not age specific, and which is ubiquitous. Finally, we propose redefining the concepts 'digital', 'net', 'native', and 'generation' in favour of reclaiming the term 'digitizen'.
Subject(s) cell-phone; critique; digital native; discourse
Language eng
Publisher Blackwell Publishing Ltd; University of Cape Town
Type of publication text
Source Journal of Computer Assisted Learning; http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x.
Identifier 0266-4909
Repository Cape Town - OpenUCT, University of Cape Town
Added to C-A: 2017-04-25;09:24:09