Standard Grant: Internet Infrastructure and Connectivity in Rural Regions of the USA

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will expand understanding of digital inequality by focusing on connectivity challenges in rural communities. In terms of the broader impacts of this project, the findings will speak directly to ongoing struggles and concerns over Internet access. Factors to be studied include telecom industry regulations, policies of the FCC and other agencies, grant and loan programs, and technological innovations emerging out of Academia and the private sector. This project will provide a better understanding of how well governments incentivizing incumbents and rural self-organizing are or are not working and why. The findings will help inform citizen advocacy groups and communities that are organizing to address their connectivity needs. Furthermore, students will be involved in an outreach activity learning about Native American communities in the area to develop approaches to managing and sharing cultural information informed by the idea of data sovereignty. This research will be of interest to communities, policy makers, technology industries and scholars. The study will center on two sites: Mendocino county, California and Crook county, Oregon. These sites are selected for their distinctive and contrasting populations and histories. This study will (a) pursue a cultural analysis of the selected sites that is attuned to rural cultural identities in order to examine how practices of Internet use are being defined and (b) look at the material affordances and constraints on access through a focus on infrastructure with special attention paid to the collective efforts by communities to cooperatively self-provision connectivity. This proposal will draw from new materialist theories because it places culture as well as collectivities and places back into the conversation on the digital divide. This research will broaden the conversation around access and connectivity to include culture, place and social institutions as well as individual user behavior.