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Abstract High-speed broadband internet is a necessary utility. However, internet service providers are often unwilling to take on the costs of serving rural areas. Federal investments to expand rural broadband have gone underutilized due to insufficient community awareness and planning practices. We explore university–community broadband planning in two rural Florida counties to demonstrate where partnership and local efforts have enabled constructive discussions toward better connectivity. We highlight similarities and differences that inform how the university and residents leveraged community capital, and we explore the planning practices employed in each case. We conclude with recommendations for community-based partnerships for broadband planning in rural communities.
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A Sociocultural Explanation of Internet-Enabled Work in Rural Regions
This article draws on ethnographic research in three rural places in the Western United States to understand how rural workers incorporate the Internet into their work practices. We find two key, divergent types of work in rural areas that leverage the Internet: (1) telework and (2) work to market and sell goods and services online. We consider why these two forms of Internet-enabled work are pursued by different segments of the rural population, attending to the socio-demographic variation within and between these two broad categories. Some key differences include whether workers are urban transplants or rural-originating, in “white-collar” or “blue-collar” occupations, and whether they are men or women. We argue that deficit framings that focus on inadequate infrastructure or absent skills are insufficient to understand such patterns of differentiated use. Instead a sociocultural explanation is needed: one that draws connections between work cultures, occupational values, skills, and practices.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1734431
- PAR ID:
- 10602800
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1073-0516
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 1-22
- Size(s):
- p. 1-22
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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