Web alliance for Regreening in Africa

The Web and the Digital Divide

The 5th Symposium in the series “Perspectives on ICT4D, to be held in Amsterdam, 27 May 2018” will have as a theme “The Web and the Digital Divide“. This event aims to gather a broad community of researchers to discuss the current issues in ICT4D and reflect on the barriers and existing paradigms that are currently hampering further expansion of the Web.

The symposium extends previously organized workshops and symposiums around the same topic. This year, we aim to provide a forum for interdisciplinary discussion around the challenges to bridge the digital divide between those that are able to fully benefit from the Web in all its forms and those who cannot. We explore technical, social and economical barriers as well as opportunities to make the Web truly accessible to all.

We will gather researchers and practitioners to share their experiences, results and challenges related to both studying and bridging the digital divide, as well as to explore various practical use cases of applications of ICT4D for addressing these challenges. The event is intended to be interdisciplinary, for researchers, practitioners, and students of fields related to ICT4D – including but not limited to development studies, computer science, social sciences, (computational) linguistics, (digital) humanities, geography, anthropology, etc.). This matches the interdisciplinarity of the Web Science conference.

This Symposium will be collocated with the WebSci18 Conference, which will be held this year at VU Amsterdam.