DMS BLOG 4

Playing football with the Digital Divide

This week’s topic looks at the digital divide between civilizations and countries that are information poor and those, which are information rich. A country that is information wealthy i.e The United States finds that its citizens on majority are better educated and have access to greater resources. Whereas, a country such as Ethiopia would be regarded as information poor, because its citizens aren’t as educated and the country and its people are economically disadvantaged. Digital divide is explained as “the differential access to and use of the Internet according to gender, income, race and location.” (Brand, 2010) Or in simpler terms, it’s how adept to technology and how far along the adoption process a country and its people are. There are two different factors that could possibly cause a digital divide amongst a set of countries:

·      Global divide: where the infrastructure differs between nations and hence one of the nations is unable to cater for the demand

·      Social divide: where the population of a country do not have access to such infrastructure and therefore do not possess the skills of IT users in further developed nations

A great example of this concept of bridging the digital divide is shown in the video below. It depicts a small area of Uganda, Africa where a telecentre has been established. The establishment provides people with all sorts of different access points. With students using the centre to further their education, business owners using the Internet to buy new products and farmers to read and learn about agriculture. It has bridged the gap between under - skilled and under- educated members of the Ugandan population.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt1rdqf6mHA&feature=player_embedded

The question asked by many people in a dilemma or a crisis situation is how can I help? Well the same was asked of me. How can my planned profession as a football player possibly bridge the gap between the digital divide of differing countries?

For many years now, sport has been used as a vehicle to transfer messages. Nelson Mandela most famously used Rugby Union to integrate different races amongst a nation that was split between black and white. He ensured that the South African rugby side incorporated members of both races to make his political beliefs a reality and consequently as we see today, save the nation. Football can definitely be used exactly the same way. Many of the worlds best and most highly paid football players come from African nations, which are regarded as information poor.  The game of football has become a huge success on the continent thanks to the continued success of African players amongst some of the best teams throughout the world. For this reason, particular individuals receive copious admiration from adoring fans all throughout Africa. Therefore, I believe that if football players were able to donate towards such programs as bridging the digital divide, (http://www.bridgethedigitaldivide.com/) along with the influence particular players such as Didier Drogbra and Michael Essien have on a population, more citizens would be likely to endorse the idea of using such establishments as the telecentre.  Allowing for football to become a channel or vehicle from which the bridge of digital divide between countries can be shortened.

A second way in which the sport of football can bridge the gap between the digital divide is by promoting community development. (A Sporting City) Sport often brings people, groups, communities and nations together, a spectacular sporting event can stop a nation, unite individuals for just one moment. When people begin to watch sport, they forget about everything else that troubles them. If technology could be used in small villages and towns throughout Africa to display football, or provide commuters with information on the beautiful game, in such places like the telecentre, a bridge would definitely have been breached. Football will have once again affected the digital divide between two countries and made a population better off.

References

A Sporting City. (n.d.). Retrieved 2010 from Blacktown City: http://www.bridgethedigitaldivide.com/

Brand, J. (2010). The Digital Divide. Bond University, Digital Media and Society . Gold Coast.

DMS BLOG 3

Team Sports will Forever Live Strong

For fourteen years now I have played ‘the beautiful game’, Football, and been apart of many different teams and communities. I have attended three different schools and one university in both England and Australia.  As well as also being apart of many different social groups along with other sporting teams and educational communities. The point I am trying to make here is that no matter, what you’ve done, where you’ve done it or even if you know you have done it, you have been apart of, or you still are apart of a community.

You see traditionally a community has been described as a group of interacting people living in a common location, with organized and shared values, attitudes and beliefs.  (Community, 2010)

Two gentlemen by the name of D.W Mcmillan and D.M Chavis (1987) first adopted the idea of community and what it meant to be apart of one. They developed research into what is referred to as the ‘sense of a community’. Their research identified four elements of “sense of community”:

o   Feeling of Membership: Whereby members attend regularly, learn any special terminology, rules and behaviour norms

o   Feeling of Influence: Members gain status through regular attendance and share as well as enforce the rules

o   Fulfilment of Needs: Whereby members are offered support when needed and a place to communicate through the ups and downs in life

o   Shared Emotion: Members embody a sense of group ‘history’ & ‘spirit’

Van Vilet & Burgers (1987) (Brand, 2010)suggested that communities contain: social interaction, a shared value system and a shared symbol system in four realms:

o   Social: Encompasses social interaction and solidarity for both individual and institutional relations

o   Political: Collective formation of goals and the implementation of policy

o   Economic: Involves the production, distribution and consumptions of goods and services

o   Cultural: The shared value and symbols systems, also corresponding to the built environment

These beliefs were founded and shared amongst the global community in 1987, when the internet and similar communication devices had not yet been established. However, this traditional sense of community is no longer the only form, with geographic location (common location as referred to above) no longer being a determining factor amongst instilling a sense of community throughout social interactions. Virtual communities have taken the world by storm, throughout the past decade, with establishments such as Myspace and more recently Facebook crossing the geographical, political, economic and cultural boundaries, to connect communities in an entirely different way.

 All four of these realms are now readily accessible and available to be fulfilled online, with the game World of Warcraft being the perfect example of a virtual community. To me, that is what the word community means to my planned profession. Will it ever change you may ask? I don’t believe so. There will always be a desire for people to play team sports. For people to want to be amongst a community such as sporting team, whereby like minded individuals are out there all trying to achieve the same goals and ambitions. It is those similar goals and ambitions that I believe will continue to drive the sense of a community throughout sporting teams.

o   Social: Allows individual and group chat, as well as encouraging group formation and membership

o   Political: Allows and encourages rule development among communities as well as a certain amount of ability to enforce those rules

o   Economic: Players are encouraged to purchase and trade items with other players

o   Cultural:  The environment and classes‘ of characters played results in shared symbolic systems and understanding of things. (Brand, 2010)

Since 1987, when Van Vilet and Burgers first suggested the idea of four realms within a community, (Brand, 2010) society has evolved at a rapid pace and so the ideas of traditional communities whereby face –to- face interaction was compulsory have somewhat subsided. Being bound by location and time restraints, were major contributing factors into the depth of the community. Nowadays online communities are not bounded by time or space with asynchronous communication easily accessible.

As a professional footballer the term community is an essential part of your everyday life. You are apart of a team, and it is that team that you train with everyday, twice a day. It is those members of your team, your community, that you step out onto the playing field with, every game. In team sports, not just one person can win the game, it takes the effort of all members of that community. Each member has to be driven by the same goals and beliefs. They have to feel apart of the community as discussed by (McMillan & Chavis, 1987)and feel as though that community will be there for them, through the good and the bad.

References

Brand, J. (2010). Restructuring Community . Digital Media and Society .

Community. (2010, November 14). Retrieved November 22, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

McMillan, D., & Chavis, D. (1987). Sense of community: A definition and theory. 16.