| This study examines issues relating to social inequality and communication technology. Both theoretical and empirical missions are pursued.; Theoretically, the study reviews the evolution of media system dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998; Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976) into communication infrastructure theory (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001) over the past three decades. How communication infrastructure theory originates and departs from media system dependency theory is examined. Based on the two theories, the author develops the concept of “communication connectedness” to illustrate the multidimensional relationships that individuals form with communication media. Four dimensions of communication connectedness include: access to technology; scope of activity participations within a medium or across different media; intensity of relationships; and centrality of communication media in daily lives.; Empirically, the four dimensions of connectedness are applied to the Internet and operationalized to form the Internet Connectedness Index. With a dataset of 585 randomly selected telephone survey respondents, individual, technological, social and communication factors that affect their Internet connectedness are considered and tested under an ecological model.; The results indicate that the following factors have significant influence on the Internet connectedness: socioeconomic status (income and education); demographic characteristics (age and ethnicity); technological environment (e.g., having a computer at home; the number of places for having Internet access); social environments concerning the nature of social relationships people have in their everyday lives (e.g., interactions with others in receiving and providing Internet-related help); and the scope and intensity of Internet-related goals.; The findings reveal that even after people gain access to the Internet, the ways they incorporate the Internet into their everyday lives differ, and that the differences reflect social disparities that characterize individuals in the context of their everyday lives. Mere access to the Internet cannot bridge social inequalities. There must be further efforts to improve people's abilities to build up their access to the Internet to derive meaningful values that can help them enhance their well-being. |
