Information Access Practices

Access to information is riding a turbulent sea of costs, technology shifts, and ever-rising requirements for digital connectivity. Although the notion of information as a foundation of democracy seems commonplace in the United States, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to drive home the disarray of access around the country and across the globe. The broader subject of the “digital divide” has received a lot of attention as a proxy for ideas around digital access. Understanding of the divide has evolved alongside the internet itself. The concept of a digital divide drove a great deal of scholarly and policy work examining capacities to engage in mediated work and educational opportunities, and worries about equity undergirded those inquiries. In a collection of articles we begin to grapple with some of the fine-grained issues around access.