Digital Delights

"Digital redlining is the modern equivalent of this historical form of societal division; it is the creation and maintenance of technological policies, practices, pedagogy, and investment decisions that enforce class boundaries and discriminate against specific groups. The digital divide is a noun; it is the consequence of many forces. In contrast, digital redlining is a verb, the "doing" of difference, a "doing" whose consequences reinforce existing class structures. In one era, redlining created differences in physical access to schools, libraries, and home ownership.

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We might think about digital redlining as the process by which different schools get differential journal access. If one of the problems of the web as we know it now is access to quality information, digital redlining is the process by which so much of that quality information is locked by paywalls that prevent students (and learners of all kinds) from accessing that information. We might think about digital redlining as the level of surveillance (in the form of analytics that predict grades or programs that suggest majors to students). We also might think about digital redlining to the degree that students who perform Google searches get certain information based on the type of machine they are using or get served ads for high-interest loans based on their digital profile (a practice Google now bans). It's essential to note that the personalized nature of the web often dictates what kind of information students get both inside and outside the classroom."