Internet Diffusion in Italy among individuals using domain names

The digital divide can occur either as a "local" ( within a given country) or "global" (between developing and industrialized countries) phenomenon. This paper intends to offer an important contribution by analyzing the digital divide in Italy and the factors contributing to this situation at the territorial level (i.e., macro areas: North, Center, South and at the provincial level) as well as by analyzing the characteristics of individuals (in Italy, men and young people are more apt to utilize the new technology than are women and the elderly). In order to do that, we used the domain names registered by individuals under the ".it" ccTLD as proxy.