DIGITAL DIVIDE EVIDENCE IN FOUR RURAL TOWNS

The debate about a digital divide between rural and urban America suggests that communities of place still influence how telecommunications and other advanced technologies are used. This article examines the utilization of email and the Web, based on a sample of 471 residents from four rural communities in Nebraska and Wisconsin, in which the study found nearly identical levels and patterns of use across the communities. The findings are discussed in terms of the two variations on the digital divide. The first is a digital divide between rural people at the same place, based on their location within networks of co-workers and friends, which in turn influences awareness, knowledge and eventual adoption of information technologies. The second divide is between rural communities that have growing economies and populations and those that are no growing, based on their locations relative to metropolitan areas and urban consumers. Policy implications and directions for future research designs on the adoption of information technology are also described. ___________________ Joseph F. Donnermeyer is a Professor in the Department of Human and Community Resource Development at The Ohio State University. C. Ann Hollifield is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunications in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia. Acknowledgment: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Ameritech Faculty Research Fellowship program at The Ohio State University, which funded this research. 108 DIGITAL DIVIDE IN FOUR RURAL TOWNS DONNERMEYER & HOLLIFIELD IT&SOCIETY, Vol. 1, Issue 4, Spring 2003 http://www.ITandSociety. org Do concepts of community and place retain any importance for contemporary analyses of the economic, social and cultural dynamics of people, groups and societies? Nearly 40 years ago, the noted sociologist, Don Martindale (1964), wrote: It was convenient.to view communities as territorially based systems of common life. However, the development of contemporary communication and transportation facilities has rendered such conceptions obsolete. Systems of common life still arise, but they are relatively free most of the time of any narrow dependence on a restricted territory. ” (p. 71) Yet today, one impact of rapid change in the development and utilization of information technology has been the emergence of scholarly concern and policy debates about the digital divide. Further, an important part of these considerations centers on a possible lag in the adoption of information technology among people who live in rural communities of place (Allen and Dillman 1994; U.S. Department of Commerce 1999; Korsching, Hipple and Abbott 2000). Potentially, information technology and a knowledge economy may send rural communities down one of two possible paths. On the positive side is the promise that information technology will allow people and businesses located in rural and other communities of place to overcome the disadvantages of distance and usher in a new era of prosperity. The other is that rural communities will lag even further behind in their development, with growing gaps in both the economic and social welfare of their populations (Parker, Husson, Dillman, Strover and Williams 1992). The core elements behind the scientific concept of community have not changed since Martindale’s days. Community is still defined as a geographic place in which people and groups interact toward the achievement of common goals (Hillery 1955; Warren 1978; Tolbert, Lyson and Irwin 1998). What has changed is the extent to which the over-all cohesion of community has declined, to be replaced by more segmented, local social structures in which people and groups are differentially connected to large -scale, national-level organizations (Sampson 1988). One stimulus for this change has been information technology, and in turn, the current segmented structures found in rural communities of place influence patterns of adoption as new information technologies come along (Brown 1981). Without knowledge about how these networks operate, the ecology of adoption of information technologies and the nature of the ruralurban digital divide cannot be understood. Scholars of contemporary rural American society generally identify two common dimensions of persisting differences between urban and rural places in the U.S. First, rural life and culture remain distinctive to some degree from urban life and culture. Political attitudes are more conservative, rates of church 109 DIGITAL DIVIDE IN FOUR RURAL TOWNS DONNERMEYER & HOLLIFIELD IT&SOCIETY, Vol. 1, Issue 4, Spring 2003 http://www.ITandSociety. org attendance are higher, and participation in voluntary organizations is above average (Luloff and Swanson, 1990; Lobao, 1990; Flora et al, 1992; Sharp, 2001). Second, there remains a greater density of acquaintanceship among members of communities of place located in rural areas (Freudenburg, 1986). These networks of interpersonal relationships influence patterns of sociation and social control. It is commonly assumed that barriers to the use of information technologies among people living in rural communities of place include 1) lack of knowledge and awareness, 2) lack of infrastructure that allows access to technologies in rural areas, 3) the added cost of establishing appropriate infrastructures in rural areas, 4) affordability to rural people, and 5) the complexity of new technologies,[item 4 does not make sense] and the related cost of learning how to use them (Crosby 1997). If place makes a difference in the ways people become acquainted with and learn about any kind of new information technology, then knowledge of these differentials can inform policy debates about their impacts among populations living in diverse rural and urban localities. Although there has been much debate and commentary concerning the rural-urban digital divide, there has been, unfortunately, little research—particularly on patterns of adoption at the specific community level. This article examines the local ecology of adoption of the two most popular forms of information technology—email and the Web—among residents of four matched rural communities. To date, most of the focus on information technology and rural places has considered its economic impact (Dholakia and Harlam, 1994; Cronin et al., 1995; U.S. Department of Commerce, 1999; Hales, Gieseke, and Vargas-Chanes, 2000). The general assumption is that information-technology development and economic development go hand-inhand and that the Internet provides a new hope for overcoming the disadvantages of being located in rural and isolated locations.