DIGITAL INEQUALITY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEM IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Анотація

The study utilizes bibliometric network analysis to identify the disciplinary structure and research gaps in studying digital inequality via analyzing extent literature between 1999 and 2025. The study investigates the phenomenon of digital inequality in the face of a globalized world as a logical consequence of economic development polarization. It reveals the essence of digital inequality and elucidates its philosophical and methodological foundations. The author specify the impact of digital polarization on communities’ engagement in three areas of human activity, namely societal, political and economic areas. The study examined the role of digital platforms and their influence tools on enhancing digital inequality. Digital platforms are becoming the modern regulators of social behaviour, a political instrument for crowd manipulation, displacing classic offline formats of interaction between people. Digitalization alters institutional architecture at all levels of management. Thus, ubiquitous digitalization is shaping a new reality and limits an individual in their right to choose. The author’s model of structural levels of digital inclusion incorporate the digital core, the connected majority, the forcibly excluded community, the unconnected and excluded groups. The categories of power, autonomy of the individual and justice in terms of digital presence in the network were redefined, based on the concepts of Arendt, Rifkin and Foucault.