Dr. Nicol Turner Lee will join us as part of the Fall 2021 Information Inequalities Speaker Series and will present the 2021 Ewing Lecture on Media Ethics.

Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, a senior fellow in Governance Studies and director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution will talk about her forthcoming book, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass (Brookings Press, 2022). The U.S. digital divide long existed before the onset of the global pandemic. Prior to the public health crisis, millions of people, which some have argued was nearly 100 million people, were not connected to the internet. With the social distancing requirements of COVID-19 and the transition from analog to digital activities, many more people, including students, farmers, senior citizens, and low-income workers, found themselves among the digitally invisible, attempting to navigate through the burgeoning and now critical digital economy. America failed them by not leaning into the urgency of universal broadband access and failing to recognize the competitiveness of the digital landscape in the global economy. Join Dr. Turner Lee as she shares the details of her forthcoming book, which included a tour of seven cities and towns across the U.S. She will unpack what has been historically defined as the “digital divide” in urban, rural, and suburban areas, and offer proposals that policymakers, industry, and civil society organizations can undertake to ensure digital equity and inclusion. Dr. Turner Lee is a sought national and international speaker and author, whose work intersects technology, race, and social justice.