Last class we discussed the crisis in journalism and digital inequality. Digital inequality is extremely important to discuss in the context of civic media because without wide access (in the broadest sense) to technology and the internet, civic media will at best provide a skewed perspective.
What does access mean? And what level of access is good enough? In class, we developed a few models of digital inclusion. In these, the most important considerations seemed to be infrastructure, technology literacy, and general climate towards digital engagement. These factors are broad and include many other concerns, each with its own degrees of inclusion. Still, they capture the general picture.
In the town I grew up in, York, Maine, the infrastructure for digital inclusion is there to varying extents. For ten years now, the state of Maine has had a program that provides laptops to students in the seventh grade or above in public schools. Some private schools in the state have followed suite, including the one I attended (although private schools normally make parents buy the laptops). It is a huge benefit to infrastructure for every student in grades seven to twelve to have a laptop. Due to this program, all middle and high schools also have wireless internet. For students, the infrastructure for digital inclusion is there almost entirely. The primary issues are that some students only have internet at school and the laptops might eventually be outdated enough that they are difficult to use with some content.
However, York and Maine in general has a ways to go with non-students. Among permanent residents (York is a tourist town), many are quite poor. In general, there is great income inequality in Maine. Technology infrastructure updates slowly. Around the year 2000, my family replaced some small refrigerators from our hotel. The old ones were immediately taken by several people who said they had never had a refrigerator. I do not think getting a computer is a priority for many of those people. Many of the residents rely on public computers. In my town, there are six computers in the library which people can use for fifteen minute time blocks. The library also requires a car for most of the town to get to in a reasonable time and it has extremely limited hours. Some infrastructure is there but it is quite limited.
For those who have internet access, even the best service offered in York is about on par with the worst internet plan in the Boston area. And forget any civic media that requires phones or using 3G for internet. You can never get a good phone signal in York and only sometimes a weak signal. Still, the network infrastructure is usable if you have internet. In Maine, 63% of households have broadband Internet. This is not great but internet access is quite common. Fortunately, internet access is improving with a new high speed fiber network. There seems to be quite a divide with infrastructure. A little over half of the population seems to have very good access but another large chunk seems to be overlooked almost entirely. This is quite apparent in the picture at the top of the post below they cleverly cover the area with no service with a textbox.
Knowledge is where York and Maine in general starts to fall apart all over. The level of technical skill is low even among those with very good access. Technical skills are taught in schools as part of the laptop programs so students seem to have at least a base level of digital literacy but this rarely goes beyond typing, browsing, document editing, and basic graphics editing even among the most privileged students. Older people in York have little support for learning about technology and often avoid it or use it very little. From a young age, I was called over to the hotel my family owned to help employees with tasks like refreshing a page or copying text. Even the more technically savvy people seem to only have minimal advanced knowledge. Most would probably have trouble even modifying existing civic media tools to fit their needs. The town has a small presence online that seems up-to-date but many of its pages are poorly done or look very old. York and Maine need more technology education programs.
The general climate for digital engagement is fairly neutral in York. There is not major censorship, if any. Still, digital engagement is not promoted. At best, local sites serve to list meeting minutes and provide information on events. This is probably because while many people know enough to operate a browser partially, the technical knowledge level is too low for participatory media. Before digital engagement can be promoted, the level of knowledge needs to be higher.
Students, the one segment of the population with the best infrastructure and highest level of knowledge, has the worst climate for digital engagement. I can only speak as of 2008 but almost all the other students in my school were horrified that I would consider posting anything online. The public and private school curriculums cover digital citizenship and safety but they seem to scare students a bit too much to the point where no one wants to participate in any community, local or otherwise, online. Furthermore, certain websites aren’t only blocked on school networks (as seems to be normal) but students are heavily monitored. This is possible because every student has a laptop. Monitoring software is installed on every laptop and this software functions even at home. Students could and did get in trouble for visiting ‘unacceptable’ websites at home. The laptops also restrict installation of software. My school required both parents and the school to approve any additional software. The school then kept written record of said software. Oh, and I went to a private school so my family owned the computer already but the school still had to approve software. All of this control and surveillance of students computers is debatable but I think it is a huge detriment to the climate for digital engagement in the only group capable of digital engagement.
There are definitely some possible civic media projects that could be done to increase digital equality in York and Maine. There are really three groups with different levels of access in Maine. The poorer part of the population can gain the most from better public computer access. The wealthier part of the population needs projects that promote and improve technical knowledge. The students, who have the most digital access, need a better climate for engagement the most. While it is geared towards education, the laptop program could in some ways be seen as a civic media project. Changes to the technology curriculum and tools to promote digital engagement in schools could be huge improvements for the student population.