University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute comes forward with years of research on internet equity; the reality isn’t good for those living on city's South, West sides

CHICAGO — From COVID-19 vaccines to the agriculture industry, from mental health wellness to the city of Chicago’s Year of Healing, equity is a term at the forefront on many societal fronts. And for the past two years, the University of Chicago Data Science Institute (DSI) has been focusing on internet equity in a hope to better understand how to fix the digital divide laid bare in state communities during this pandemic.

Researchers from the university’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice and the Department of Computer Science have been collaborating for the past. At Monday’s Data Science Institute summit on UChicago’s campus, Nick Feamster, faculty director of research at the Data Science Institute, and Nicole Marwell, associate professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice — both principal investigators of the initiative — revealed a 32-point difference between the most connected neighborhoods in the Loop and Near North Side (where more than 94% of households are connected to the internet) compared with Far South Side neighborhoods of Burnside and West Englewood, where fewer than 62% of households are connected.