Media Access Observations and Comments 9/20/07

Part II of Media Access offers several studies that aim to tease out the less-frequently explored area of the psychological dispositions that might help to explain the digital divide in terms of Internet access, use, and comprehension. There are several positive elements in the studies, as well as some areas that merit further explanation or exploration.

Grabe and Kamhawi (2004) explore how demographic variables interact with other conditions in influencing media access, use, comprehension, and perceived trust of information available on the Web. I did come away with a couple of concerns about their study. First, they measure adults who have some high school education or only a high school degree against adults who are working on graduate degrees to evaluate how education influences media use, comprehension, and trust of information. This seems to be a problematic split, considering the percentage of adults who have completed a Bachelor’s degree that are not examined as a group. It would seem to me that gathering data on college graduates at the Bachelor’s degree level is necessary here for a more representative sample of adults.

The authors are also surprised by the finding that people with higher levels of education trust the news and information provided on the Internet less than do adults with lower levels of education. Would it not stand to reason that as people gain further knowledge of the world around them, they would be more skeptical of the information handed to them? We currently teach undergraduate journalism majors to seek the truth and to question sources thoroughly in order to confirm the validity of the information. Perhaps this area of examination needs further analysis for reasons behind why the educated trust the information less than do lower educated consumers.

Several of the scholars in this section of the book make sound observations about elements we do not commonly address when discussing digital divide research. One idea is that consumers can become easily confused when adjusting to a new form of media like the Internet because of the complexity that some Web sites entail. Consumers who are used to passive interactivity (like flipping through channels on a television) might find themselves lost when dealing with any one of the news Web sites on the Internet that uses dozens of hyperlinks on their front page. Take a look at the daily postings on CNN's Web site (http://www.cnn.com/) or on the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com/), and it is apparent that their is merit in the sholars' arguments about complexity.

Rojas et al. (2004) provide an interesting observation about why minorities in an Austin high school were having trouble making use of the Internet in their everyday lives. They find that some of the minorities might interact more readily if the content was in Spanish. This suggests that concern over access might be trumped by the need for foreign language content (or at least training for users in how to access the appropriate content). Further study on the language barrier may help clarify part of the problem.

The aforementioned findings are supported in the work of Youtie, Shapira, and Laudeman (2004). They suggest that in spite of free access, use still lagged in a traditional digital divide community. The authors reference Blacksburg’s Electronic Village (http://www.bev.net/). The LaGrange community findings were inconsistent with those of Blacksburg (Kavanaugh & Patterson, 2001).

I believe there are two reasons that might explain the disparity. First, Blacksburg is a community that is well linked to a nationally-recognized University that specializes in technological education, unlike LaGrange. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that there might be a more active educational role in the technological integration process. In addition, Virginia Tech (http://www.vt.edu/) maintains a very strong town-gown relationship with the town of Blacksburg, providing many service and education opportunities to the community. It is reasonable to hypothesize that this interconnection between the two enhances the Internet access, participation, and comprehension of the citizens. Further examples of this interconnection currently exist in the Blacksburg and Virginia Tech community.

Blacksburg now maintains a citizen journalism Web page where Virginia Tech students and Blacksburg citizens provide content, called Planet Blacksburg (http://www.planetblacksburg.com/). The Planet Blacksburg project is similar to Lew Friedland’s Madison Commons at the University of Wisconsin (http://www.madisoncommons.org/). While Planet Blacksburg is more student-oriented than the Commons, it further illustrates the kind of connected relationship Blacksburg has with the University. If LaGrange were the host city for a major University, it might help to decrease the town’s digital divide in the same way previous scholars have found in Blacksburg (Kavanaugh & Patterson, 2001).