Developing a Community Based Participatory Project in Interior Alaska to Bridge the Digital Divide.

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds the PI for two-weeks to explore with three Alaska Native villages of the Yukon Flats School District a community based participatory research (CBPR) project that would assess rural Alaskan information access and the potential of Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology for use in Alaska Native communities where current internet connectivity is frequently poor. To the PI's knowledge DTN is not in use in Alaska, but has recently been successfully prototyped in the Lapland and Slovenia. Since Thompson served as the Librarian for Yukon Flat's Communities in the 1970's he has maintained an interest in improving rural Alaskan community access to information technologies. This project will enable Thompson to explore contemporary rural information access issues through discussions with rural residents in Yukon Flats villages; with the intent of creating a CBPR research project that will explore the digital divide in Interior Alaskan communities collaboratively. Information access has become widespread through the growth of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and mass products such as Web search engines and social media products such as Facebook. Such products are not designed to support information access optimally for different cultures, such as those of rural Alaska. The DTN itself is a protocol that promises to make communication technically easier in sparsely inhabited rural areas. When information access systems that are designed in a community-based participatory way, such systems not only facilitate rural information access but also hold promise to improve health care and other critical infrastructures, which all depend on the Internet. In addition, this project will increase the participation of Alaska Native people in information science with the potential for transforming the way rural Alaskan communities access the internet.