The Impacts of COVID-19 on Digital Equity Ecosystems

COVID-19 has turned the floodlights on digital inequality in rural, tribal, and urban communities across the United States. As Benton Senior Fellow Jonathan Sallet has noted, because of the pandemic “we need to inject a new sense of urgency into implementing equitable broadband policies.” In support of that goal, we provide evidence in our new report, Growing Healthy Digital Ecosystems During COVID-19 and Beyond, to show how digital inclusion coalitions across the country have responded to the triple challenges of the pandemic, growing economic inequality, and racial injustice facing poor communities and communities of color without access to broadband internet at home. In our new report, published by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, we present findings from a survey of individuals representing a diverse group of organizations across the United States that have self-identified as being part of either a formal, informal, or emerging digital inclusion coalition. The purpose of our study was to better understand the role these coalitions have played in supporting what we are calling “digital equity ecosystems” in their communities during the challenges of the pandemic.

[Colin Rhinesmith is an Associate Professor and Director of the Community Informatics Lab in the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Susan Kennedy is the Project Coordinator for the Community Informatics Lab in the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science.]