Technophobia and ambivalence to the information and communication technologies (ICT) and its impact on the digital divide. Empirical evidence and theoretical discussion

Within the social sciences there is some consensus in explaining the emergence and development of the digital divide from social variables (such as education and age), or psychological variables (such as perceived usefulness or difficulty attributed). However, low attention has been given the role of negative (technophobia) or ambivalent social representations about technology in general, and ICTs in particular, in the process of incorporating these technologies in everyday life. Our paper will show the precise mechanism that these technophobic or ambivalent social representations intervene in processes of individual appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Without denying the relevance of sociodemographic and psychological usual variables, the paper will highlight the importance of such social images about the technoscience in the genesis and development of the digital divide. Finally, we will consider the consequences of this new explanatory approach to the use of ICT and the digital divide has for the processes of social exclusion in contemporary information and knowledge societies. In the theoretical discussion we will provide empirical evidence from a study about Spanish citizenship which have used both qualitative methods (with in-depth interviews and focus groups) and quantitative methods (using a representative survey).