Caring networks for digital inclusion: how network weaving transforms responses to digital inequalities

Abstract

Digital inequalities persist despite extensive policy and research efforts aimed at expanding access, skills, and technology use. Prior research has focused mainly on techno-centric, top-down interventions, which have been limited in their success due to their lack of relational, context-sensitive engagement. This study conceptualises digital inclusion work as care work to address digital inequalities. Drawing on the Ethics of Care and Network Weaving frameworks, we examine how digital inclusion networks mobilise relationships and collective action. We present a paradigmatic case study of an exemplar digital inclusion network in northern England and show how the network’s effectiveness lies in its ability to build and sustain nurturing relationships among diverse but aligned organisations. Our findings identify four interlocking mechanisms, caring about, caring for, caregiving, and care-receiving, through which Network Weaving principles enable the network to operate as a network of care. These mechanisms reinforce one another cyclically, with care-receivers re-entering the network as caregivers themselves, sustaining a collective, rather than individually delivered, process of digital inclusion. By framing digital inclusion work as care work, our study advances theoretical understanding of how relational infrastructures enable more transformative responses to digital inequalities.