TPRC47: Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy

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Abstract

Access to high-speed Internet service has become an essential component to the nation’s economy, education, and healthcare. However, federal data continues to show tribal lands are the least connected areas of the country. AIPI launched a survey to collect information from residents of tribal reservations to determine what levels of Internet access they had and what types of devices they using to access it. The study also identified potential barriers to access, such as the lack of availability or its unaffordability for residents to purchase.

Our survey found that residents on tribal lands are predominantly using smart phones to access the internet, while many are also accessing it through public Wi-Fi or at a friend/relative’s house. However, the data should not be interpreted or used to defend “mobile only” as the singular solution to providing internet service. In this study 50% of respondents stated that their internet use was limited because they did not have enough data in their cell phone plan. Further research is needed to ascertain if there are specific limitations of mobile use in certain situations, such as the reliability or preference of using mobile over hardline connections for certain activities. 

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Abstract

This study details the kinds of online privacy tradeoffs that disproportionately impact cell-mostly internet users — who are likely to be Black, Hispanic or low-income. During focus group discussions with 79 cell-mostly internet users in Philadelphia and Long Beach, Calif., we posed three research questions. First, how do cell mostly internet users — who tend to live in economically marginalized communities — articulate the perceived risk factors affecting their mobile phone data practices? In other words, how do they conceptualize data privacy? Second, we explored to what extent do they consider mobile privacy breaches to be discriminatory or unjust? Finally, we asked how do cell mostly internet users alter behavior or pass up opportunities due to privacy concerns? The research finds that members of disadvantaged urban communities who rely on mobile phones to access the internet and frequently use mobile apps, may be disproportionately subjected to privacy violations — sometimes forcing them to alter online behavior in ways that harm personal relationships and limit prospective employment. Study participants reported being on their phones “24/7,” “a few times an hour” and one even commented that the phone “is a part of me.” These anecdotes are supported by the app tracker data we collected from 14 study participants who installed App Usage. The project findings shine light on an increasingly serious problem of digital life — the inequities exacerbated by data insecurity that are experienced by all individuals but are more salient among those living in economic precarity.

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Abstract

In the United States, prison reform remains the focus of policies and foundation efforts. High incarceration rates and a focus on incapacitation during incarceration lead to a “revolving door effect”, with more than two thirds of parolees rearrested within three years of release. One aspect that is missing from this debate is how access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) might improve the prisoner reentry process.

Although there are localized efforts, such as New York City’s Prisoner Reentry Institute’s “Tech 101” course, instruction of ICTs is not a core component of prisoner reentry. Some reentry training is computer-assisted, and some prisons offer basic computer classes. Yet, most courses do not cover how to operate the Internet, and there is little research on access to ICTs and the digital skills of returning citizens. We ask:

RQ1. Which types of ICTs do parolees use, if any, and for what purpose?

RQ2. If parolees do not use ICTs, what are the key barriers to access and use of ICTs?

RQ3. Which kinds of ICTs do parolees need to access and use reentry services?

We conducted focus groups with 78 male and female returning citizens in a large Midwestern city in spring 2018. The mean age was 52 years (M=52.07, SD=19.4). Participants had been released from prison within 4 months of the focus groups and they had served a sentence of at least 2-3 years. We used a semi-structured approach to ask questions about ICT use, use barriers, and the kinds of ICTs needed during reentry. We conducted various rounds of thematic coding of the transcribed data using NVivo.

All participants had cell phones, mostly smartphones (62%), but only few owned laptops or tablets (8.2% and 9.6%, respectively). As most participants lived in temporary housing, access to computers and the Internet was limited. In addition, lack of skills was a main barrier, although this varied depending on age, length of sentence, and how much participants had engaged with ICTs before. The perceived effects of lack of access and skills were largely negative. Participants reported issues in using ICTs to search and apply for jobs, write emails, and use apps on their phones. Whereas some were able to learn from friends, family, shelter staff, community centers, or teach themselves, many were unsure where to ask for help and what kinds of help to ask for.

This study gives crucial insights into ICT uses and barriers to use during the reentry process. As part of our policy recommendations, we stress the importance of including ICT training during and after incarceration. While we do not claim that being able to use ICTs is the magic wand to fix recidivism, we argue that ICTs are an important and currently overlooked component of prisoner reentry. 

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Abstract

Delivering prosperity to all requires efficient and equitable access to infrastructure. This is certainly true for digital infrastructure which is now essential for both societal and economic development, as the internet provides a range of new opportunities for (monetary and non-monetary) value creation. Surprisingly, our understanding of how to connect people to the internet is largely based on local or national case studies, as opposed to any systematic unifying assessment. Indeed, the existing tools and data available to decision makers is scant with most approaches treating countries as homogeneous units without providing the sub-national comparative economic assessment of different digital infrastructure strategies. Reflecting spatial heterogeneity in engineering-economic models is essential and can help prioritise limited financial resources to different locations based on the cost of delivering connectivity. Hence, the aim of this paper is to develop a globally-scalable assessment framework which can be applied to any country to support national and international policy making on narrowing the digital divide for 4G connectivity. Such an approach is applied here to Uganda, where the strategies tested include both passive and active infrastructure sharing (‘neutral hosting’) in rural locations to reduce costs, as well as quantifying the efficiency of fixed fibre versus microwave backhaul technologies. The globally-scalable software developed contributes the necessary tools for undertaking continental, or even global, digital infrastructure assessment.

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Abstract

Prior research on digital divides and inequalities demonstrates that those who have multiple Internet access points engage in broader and more capital-enhancing online uses (Dutton & Blank, 2013, 2014; Zillien & Hargittai, 2009). These capital-enhancing uses, in turn, can serve as one mechanism to help narrow socio-economic inequities in distressed communities. By understanding online behavior as it relates to different points of access such as mobile, home and public access, as well as different types of devices, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile phones, policy makers can take steps to narrow digital divides. This paper examines highly distressed urban communities in the city of Detroit, Michigan. Based on 525 telephone surveys of Detroit residents, this study uses a path modeling approach to examine the relationship between socio-economic variables, attitudes toward the internet, different points of access and devices, and different types of capital-enhancing Internet uses, such as e-commerce, looking for health information, reading the news and job seeking. Although home access has been dubbed the gold standard of going online in the past, we argue that policy makers can leverage and enhance existing modes of access such as mobile phones and public access to better facilitate capital-enhancing online activities.

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Abstract

More governmental entities are supporting their residents in digital skill acquisition as part of their information and communications technology (ICT) strategies to foster digital inclusion and broadband adoption. Digital skills frameworks and curricula have been developed by community-based organizations, libraries, and companies, but there lacks a robust comparison between these resources to understand what specific skills they cover. The selection of skills and competencies covered by these trainings impacts the effectiveness of public and private investments in areas such as workforce training, education, and government application development. Understanding which skills are important and are being offered in training can help guide policy, investments and assessment. For this paper, University of Washington and the City of Seattle partnered together to identify and compare digital skills and competencies recommended by fifteen popular frameworks and curricula. This research can be used to adopt shared definitions and evaluation of skills, clarify education pathways, assess training programs, guide investments and policy, and identify important skills not currently addressed by popular resources.

For the review, we examined six digital skills and competency frameworks and nine digital skills curricula from the United States and Europe targeted at high school students or adults. We compared the skills covered across the frameworks and curricula to understand what digital literacy resources covered which skills for different learner needs. The resulting comparison identified a total of 74 distinct digital skills. We then placed these skills into ten separate categories: gateway or foundational skills (11 skills), communication (8), creation (8), device ownership (4), information skills (7), lifelong learning (3), mobile (6), online life (11), privacy and security (7), and workplace (9). Overall, frameworks covered more skills (median of 31) than curricula (median of 23) but individual curriculum covered certain topics more in-depth. We also discovered that only about half of the resources had accompanying assessments for individuals or training providers to measure skills progression. The result of this work is a tool for funders, governments, and training providers to help focus and improve their digital inclusion efforts. The research paper also recommends future action and collaborative efforts to clarify and align learning pathways, expand the application of the comparative tools, develop new training and competency standards, and guide investments in digital skills training and materials. 

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Over-the-top (OTT) services are value-added applications such as streaming media, messaging, or voice calling that utilize service provider networks for delivery without being under the control of the network service provider. In many cases, the OTT services com- pete with services offered by the network operator themselves, such as when consumers use VoIP services like Skype or messaging services like WhatsApp instead of voice calling or short message service (SMS) offered by mobile wireless carriers.
In most countries, network operators are under statutory obligation to carry OTT traffic, and while they may receive revenue by charging for this carriage at the rate of regular data traffic, they forgo the higher revenues earned by charging for calls or messages directly. While this has been a boon for consumers, it is having negative impacts on the revenues, forecasts, and infrastructure investments of network service providers.
The issue of infrastructure investment is particularly sensitive in developing countries, where the need to create new infrastructure is substantial, it is difficult to attract investment, few alternative service providers exist if an incumbent leaves the market, and average revenue per user is already relatively low. Regulators in these markets face dif- ficult choices due to the desire to bring better and lower-cost services

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Along with the gradual expansion of the ICT, an important amount of research has documented the emergence of the digital divide. Even if the main takeaway is that not everybody can ripe the benefits that telecommunication technology currently offers it’s important to keep acknowledging that women in developing countries have to overcome much more barriers than their male counterpart to appropriate the ICT.
The studies on digital divide emphasizes two main tenets in the research agenda: ICT access and ICT usage. Our research seeks to analyze the gender digital divide in terms of ICT usage narrowing our focus on internet use in Mexico.
Even though the literature has consistently accumulated evidence of the gender- digital-divide existence in many societies, there is work that can be done to shed a bit more light to the subject. One of the ways to do this is keep seeking to generate ever so slightly more precise characterizations of the divide when sociodemographic and economics factors are taken into account.
Therefore, this article seeks to tackle the following entangled empirical questions: Is there geographical patterns in mexicans internet usage? In which social, demographic and economic factors hinges Mexico’s use of internet if any? Does differences exists between men and women in internet use frequency?
To do so we analyze the 32 Mexico’s states sociodemographic microdata from a quantitative exploratory approach through the use of entropy class indexes. In particular, following Lengsfeld (2011), we use the Theil Index, which is commonly used in the income inequality literature with great effect. Starting from the definition of mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive population groups, the Theil index allows to identify two sources of internet usage inequality in a population: the inequality that arises between groups and the inequality that arises within groups. At the same time, the index is able to measure the total internet usage inequality by the weighted aggregation of both of the sources of inequality. The estimation of the index uses both categorical and discrete data taken from the Mexican National Household Information Technology Availability and Usage Survey 2017 (INEGI, 2017). The variables that determine the mutually exclusive groups that are used for the index estimation are: age, education, economically active population, type of occupation and economically inactive population. In each and every one of this segmentation criteria we will analyze the gender disparities that may arise. Since our data source allows it, we do this procedure for the 32 states in the Mexican republic. When taken into account comprehensively, all this estimation enables us to present a detail diagnosis of the digital-gender-divide in Mexico.

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Abstract
Despite consensus over the importance of measuring digital inclusion, there is a lack of agreement among researchers on how it should be measured. This paper builds extensively off of prior research on measuring digital inclusion by analyzing different definitions for digital inclusion and comparing common digital inclusion indices. We analyze the variables included in five indices intended to measure digital inclusion:

1) Australian Digital Inclusion Index,

2) CISCO Country Digital Readiness,

3) ITU Digital Access Index,

4) The Economist Inclusive Internet Index, and

5) the World Bank Digital Adoption Index.

Using a methodology called “qualitative meta-synthesis,” we select variables that appear in at least three of the five original indices for inclusion in a more parsimonious index, the Digital Inclusion and Policy Index (DIP Index). We construct and analyze four versions of the DIP Index to validate fitness—two versions contain parsimonious combinations of variables from the five original indices and two versions add a variable to measure the presence of state-level digital inclusion policy. Data collected from the National Statistics and Geography Institute of Mexico for all 32 States of Mexico from 2018 are used to recreate four of the five original indices and our four versions of the DIP Index. These indices are correlated with each other and with an independent measure of economic and social competitiveness, the State Competitive Index developed by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness. Theory supports a positive relationship between digital inclusion strategies and increasing state-level competitiveness in regard to economic and social factors. The results suggest that a parsimonious index of as few as four variables is capable of measuring digital inclusion and that an index of as few as five variables, including a variable to measure the presence of state-level digital inclusion policy, is capable of measuring digital inclusion and impacts of state-level digital inclusion policy. The results create a parsimonious index for measuring digital inclusion, which can serve to alleviate costs for data gathering and elucidate the differing impacts of state-level policy strategies on digital inclusion.