Inequalities and the figure of the digital user by default

This article examines the socio-technical mechanisms underpinning the gradual standardization of the figure of the digital user during the digitisation of public services, and its impact on the production of inequalities in their use. It draws on an in-depth case study conducted within a public interest organisation in Belgium and is based on a theoretical approach at the crossroads of the sociology of digital social inequalities and an approach to public action through the prism of its instruments. By analysing the dynamics at work in the design of an online administrative counter and its actual use by people who are remote from digital technology, we will be able to see how institutional, organisational and technical constraints, coupled with a logic of prioritising the users for whom the service is intended, lead to the disqualification of categories of users whose characteristics are remote from the behaviour expected of an “ordinary” user-citizen.