The Digital Villages Research Network

Paul, Eileen and I attended and presented at the Niace conference on Digital skills and inclusion in London yesterday. See the conference website for lots of information on the day.

Our workshop focused on rural broadband access, digital exclusion and non-use and the value of digital village websites. We used data from our research to faciliate discussion. The document can be found here. All names have been changed.

I was pleased to hear that the rural issue is on the radar, though there seems to be much more work to be done. There is also a suggestion on the Niace website that plans for superfast broadband rollout will exacerbate the urban-rural divide. Our data supports this view, with Moorsholm residents reporting difficulties in accessing websites, especially with new media features and with potentially serious implications for rural businesses. Suggestions were made that more outreach is needed in rural communities, for example, internet access points in pubs and community venues, or greater use of dongles and 3G. Whilst these ideas are excellent for rural residents, they do still bypass the core problem of inequitable access and connectivity across geographical areas. 

There is an increasing push to get non-users online, with a concerning suggestion that there will be much less choice about use in the future. See slide 6 of this presentation. Although it is recognised that digital exclusion maps onto social exclusion and poverty, it seems that action to combat digital exclusion will focus on the necessity of internet use, rather than the underlying factors which shape access and skills development.

There is a strong case to be made for encouraging greater development of digital villages for local communities, not least because of the connectivity it affords community members. Comments from our workshop suggest that digital villages need good organisation and leadership. They can also be a way of getting people involved in community both on the ground and online. A nice example of different digital villages can be seen here.

We are pleased to report that the DVN project is now moving into its second phase of research – the computer and internet survey.

Phase 1, which included developing a community research network and mapping local ICT provision, has been a success. The community researchers and the DVN team have accessed a wide range of local services to find out what ICT provision is on offer. We are currently working on the analysis of this data and will report our findings in the autumn.

Our digital map of ICT provision across Redcar and Cleveland is under development with support from Prof Mike Lockyer from the School of Computing and Maths at Teesside University.

Some of the community mapping will continue into the second phase and we are currently broadening our network of community researchers. Adverts have gone out in the local press and we look forward to meeting potential researchers in the coming weeks. New researchers will join the existing network and start on phase 2 activities. They will receive initial training on the DVN project, ethics and safety and digital media for social research before going on to assist with the survey.

Our existing community researchers have evaluated their initial training sessions and we are pleased to report that the workshops have been a success.

The household survey will begin in October 2009. Community researchers have taken part in workshops 4 and 5 and are currently preparing their survey distribution strategies. The survey will take place in Moorsholm, Redcar, Skinningrove, Carlin How and Saltburn. It aims to generate information on computer and internet use within these communities. We aim to answer questions such as, ‘How many people currently have broadband access in the home?’, ‘How often do people use the internet at home?’ and ‘What are people using the internet for?’.

We would like to thank everyone who has taken part so far in phase 1 of the research and community researchers for helping us to successfully deliver the first part of the project. We look forward to starting phase 2 in the autumn (2009).

Check out the article on page 19 here.