Beyond Access: Community Technology Centers and Use of Democratic Processes

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This research examines how low income communities and neighborhoods make use of Internet access being provided through public access channels. Public access is a policy and programming strategy embraced by government and private sector organizations, that puts high-speed links to the Internet in publicly accessible places, primarily in low income communities. There are more than 200 such networks in the US, facilitated through community technology centers and other access points. This project will explore whether and how community competence develops through this public access and the role of community technology centers (CTCs) in assisting this development. The research plan involves the senior researchers and graduate students at the LBJ School of the University of Texas in ethnographic case studies of a variety of CTCs in low income neighborhoods in Austin, Texas. The team will also track the deployed technologies in the target neighborhoods, and collect data on uses of the Internet in these settings by low-income people and families. The research strategy is participatory; the people who are the staff and volunteers and neighborhood residents in the CTCs will help to shape and carry out the research. The working hypothesis is that democratic processes help define the extent and degree to which CTC participants engage with and learn from each other, thereby influencing the development of community competence. Examining a number of CTCs that differ mostly on this dimension should help to test this hypothesis. To this purpose, several measures of democratic processes and technological use have been identified. The results of this research should include project reports presented at professional meetings, training conferences, and articles in peer reviewed publications.