Abstract

Due to the settlement of the ICT environment and the widespread dissemination of Net media, the quantitative digital divide based on access to information has evolved into the formation of a qualitative digital divide. In the current information environment where enormous amounts of information exist on the Internet, there is a deeper intellectual digital divide that is different from the existing quantitative and qualitative digital divide. This study identified the changes in digital divide resulted from the evolution of information environment and empirically verified the formation of the intellectual digital divide. It also demonstrated that the intellectual digital divide is not distinct from the existing quantitative and qualitative digital divide, but from differences in the intellectual capacity of the information based on the factors of the existing digital divide. In particular, it was confirmed that the educational and economic levels, which have been the key factors of the traditional digital divide, still form the quantitative and qualitative digital divide, and also act as the key factors in the formation of the intellectual digital divide.