Knowledge capital and symbolic violence: divides and inequalities within the knowledge-society

Scholars have identified two digital divides concerning the relationship between technologies and information. The first one is about the access to ICT devices, while the second one focuses on different social usages by groups, aiming also at evaluating the effects on various aspects of individuals’ life chances, like academic achievement, civic and political participation, and the public policies for mitigating social inequalities. This paper aims at isolating and analysing more deeply a specific part of the second digital divide, that we consider an autonomous ‘knowledge divide’ as .it is based on the endowment of what we call ‘Knowledge Capital’. This one is characterized by three analytical dimensions: Knowing, Acquaintances, Acknowledges that influence and structure the usage. Knowledge gap expresses differences in interests and motivations, in the ability to critically analyse information and their digital sources, to take a detachment self-reflexive position, to grasp meanings, symbols, and languages, to interpret the social construction of the media. So we hypothesise that individuals devoid of this capital suffer the symbolic violence exercised by the medium, adopting behaviours as emulation, conformism and uncritical response to fashions and fads. This issue raises some implications for governance and citizenship in the knowledge society through an exercise of sociological imagination.