Can Anybody Help Me?: Using Community Help Desk Call Records to Examine the Impact of Digital Divides During a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic has ignited lightning-fast adoption of digital tools in our communities, organizations, and systems of governance. It also inspired an unprecedented level of providing access to digital devices to communities and individuals lacking prior access. The situation and circumstances provide a unique opportunity to understand digital divides through a new lens. In this work, we contribute a contemporaneous understanding of digital divides beyond access by qualitatively analyzing over 300 calls made to a volunteer-based community IT help desk. We highlight the intertwined network of challenges leading to ecosystem digital divides and contribute new insights into how the complex socio-technical systems of practice, and the tools to support them, must adapt to bridge digital divides more effectively.