Jan van Dijk

Jan A.G.M. van Dijk is a professor of sociology and communication science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He teaches and investigates the sociology of the information society and the social aspects of the new media. He developed one of the several existing concepts of the network society in his book The Network Society and extended the concept of the digital divide in his book The Deepening Divide, Inequality in the Information Society. He reframed the concept from a focus on inequality of physical access to digital technology to a focus on inequality of digital skills (literacy), motivation to use and actual use of this technology. Afterwards he focussed on digital skills with research results published in Digital Skills, Unlocking the information society, co-author Alexander van Deursen.