The Undiscovered & The Digital Divide
It's hard to help artists get discovered when such a significant amount of the world's population doesn't even have access to the internet. This problem goes deeper than one may originally think. I say this because of the digital divide. That is when the difference or gap in between people who can afford and access digital technology from those who don't have the same privilege, resources, or even knowledge to get that access. In fact, according to Mary Chayko in her book, Superconnected, 4.4 billion individuals around the world, which is around 60% of the entire world's population, currently are not connected to the internet. Continuing on that interesting fact, over one-half billion out of the 4.4 billion individuals worldwide come from Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. This proves in general that wealthier countries have more internet users, according to Chayko in Superconnected. The Undiscovered artists represented will never been seen in these countries because they don't have the technology or access to the internet that is necessary to view these talented artists.
There are a good amount of barriers that come with the access of internet and not just for poorer countries, but also those that have stricter government laws or even lack of interest in the subject. One of these barriers of the internet is low income as well as low standard of living. As I stated before, poorer countries don't always have the money or resources as other countries do to help them gain access to the globalization or, in other words, the "interconnected society" movement. Another common barrier in these poorer countries is the lack of education. Not everyone has the access to free school like people do in America. Therefore there's a significant amount of people around the world who can't read or write. The third barrier is political as well as government control over the internet and digital media. Countries like, China, Syria, Russia, and Morocco use internet service providers to filter out any content that goes against their laws or government as a way to protect people from uprising against the government. Last but not least, some individuals don't feel the need to be apart of the globalization movement. They simply don't care enough, or don't care to learn about it.
These all are the challenges that set us back when it comes to showcasing talent of the represented artists of The Undiscovered. To help The Undiscovered with their mission to get their artists discovered, click the link below to navigate to The Undiscovered website:
