The Institutional Digital Divide

Abstract

Concerns about a digital divide in U.S. politics that separates those who have and do not have access to technology have persisted for decades. Those concerns are prominent for immigrants and ethnoracial minorities who have tended to participate in politics, in general, and digital politics, in particular, at lower levels than others. Less attention has focused on the role representative nonprofits play in using technology to share political information and whether there is an institutional dimension to the digital divide. This article examines the adoption of social media by immigrant-serving nonprofits in the context of mobilization around elections. The findings suggest that responding organizations have adopted social media slowly and that key internal and external factors seem to relate to social media adoption. Hispanic American organizations were the fastest to adopt social media and have continued to be a technology leader. However, certain immigrant communities, especially the Asian American community, have been particularly slow to adopt social media suggesting that a digital divide exists within the population of immigrant-serving nonprofit organizations. These findings can be used by the leaders and managers of nonprofits to inform future decisions about the integration of technology into their operations.