Individual-Multinational Study of Internet Use: The Digital Divide Explained by Displacement Hypothesis and Knowledge-gap Hypothesis

The digital divide phenomenon manifests both within and between developed and less-developed countries. The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical foundation for digital divide research and, subsequently, to identify patterns of internet adoption and use based on individual behaviors of long-established media systems and variables traditionally employed to predict the digital divide. The knowledge gap hypothesis and the displacement hypothesis, both from the communications literature, are utilized in combination to study digital inequality and to make clearer the role of time spent with traditional media in the perpetuation of the digital divide.