Digital inequality and media consumption practices of poor individuals: The case of Eskişehir

This study focuses on the problem of digital inequality. The aim of the study was to reveal how the possession of new mass media, the views on them and the practices and skills to use them were affected by age, gender, and socio-economic status in the case of poor individuals in Eskisehir. This mixed-design study based on a field study, 415 questionnaires and 39 semi-structured interviews was conducted in Emek and Gundogdu neighborhoods, where low-income families live, and Sevinc village in Odunpazarı district of Eskisehir. The research results indicated that access to mass media was considered highly important even in certain households that were observed to experience deep poverty. Nevertheless, when the percentage rates of digital inequality were examined, qualitative data made the invisible and hidden aspects of it visible. While the results once again revealed that digital inequalities were not a problem of division that can only be resolved by accessing the media, they showed that the new inequalities were expressed as "second-level digital divide" and "third-level digital divide" in the literature. New mass media have an important function in overcoming the walls formed by a low level of education and economic constraints. On the other hand, age, level of education, and gender stand out as the variables that affect the views on media contents, the skills and practices to use new media, and the tendencies to benefit from time spent online. It is observed that second-level and third-level digital inequalities are supported by inequalities in offline life and also support them. Furthermore, although the rate of knowledge of how to use the computer and the internet decreases as the age increases, the qualitative results indicate that the relationship between age and new media does not follow a straight linear course because leaving education life early, marriage at a young age, having child, and poverty appear as a threshold that sets the limits of the youth. This finding reveals the relationship between digital inequalities and social origin of individuals.