Digital Divisions

Community Profile

I would love input on what i’ve put together below. Let me know if I’m completely off-base with my analysis, or if I’ve overlooked something important.

WHO:

It somewhat difficult to find a sizable “digital divide” community online. This topic encompasses a wide range of technology interests and social issues, and so does not lend itself to one simple category.

From reading, writing and interviewing over the past few months, I’ve discovered a couple communities that my content would appeal to.

The media activism community is composed of people who are excited about the Internet and Web as a new democratic medium, and new technologies as a way to extend this medium. These people are students, community leaders and organizers, programmers, artists and journalists. Many of them are concerned about issues that threaten the democratic nature of the Internet, such as Net Neutrality, and are very interested in combining technology and community.

This group is a highly connected, blog reading crowd. They have an interest in technology, but many are interested in using it to reach others.

The technology enthusiast community’s interests are similar to those of the activist community, however the focus is on the nuts and bolts rather on the utility. The incredible success of gadget blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo are a testament to the size of this community. Having read posts and comments on these blogs for years, I can say that the motivating factor behind the interest of most people in this community is the impact the technology has on their own lives. People like to read about the iPhone and the newest 100 inch plasma screen because they want one.

The technology enthusiast community is generally young, educated and male. And this demographic is massive, around 2.7 visitors a month on Engadget.

While I don’t intend to focus on the nuts and bolts of technology, many of the topics covered by these large sites are similar to the topics that fall into my category. By adding unique perspective and a social awareness angle to technology news events, and by commenting and participating in that community, I believe I would be able to find a subset of that audience who would be interested in my content.

The group of dedicated readers I managed to survey are all college educated, mostly between the ages of 18 to 35, and a few between the ages of 35 to 55. They work in the fields of healthcare, information technology, journalism, human resources and publishing.

WHAT:

What is the content that these communities are interested in? What are their sources of news?

The activists and enthusiasts are usually up-to-date on technology issues and are above average in their understanding of technology.

At a high level, these are some of the things they are interested in, gathered from observing the communities they frequent, and talking to some of them.

• Net Neutrality
• Social Networking Services and Web Applications
• E-government
• Politics
• International issues
• Local issues
• Social impact of technology
• Broadband - providers’ plans and politics
• Programming: for the web and mobile devices
• Interoperability between computers and online services
• Open source
• Community building
• Computer Hardware
• Mobile Phones

People in the tech enthusiast crowd have an affinity for online sources of news. Services such as Twitter, Pownce, and chat are good sources of recommendations or breaking news. Social media sites like Digg.com, Reddit, and Slashdot, as well as a wide range of blogs provide updates on interesting content.

Of those that visit my site that I was able to survey, I found that the older readers were most likely to read newspapers. Younger readers were more likely to read a magazine than a newspaper. But for both groups, most stick to mainstream news sources on the Internet like the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and Yahoo. Younger readers participated in popular social network tools like MySpace, Facebook and Digg and many made daily use of instant messaging. Readers of all ages watched some amount of TV news. A few readers read blogs, mostly political or sports blogs.

HOW:

What are popular ways members of these communities communicate?

• Twitter
• Instant message: gChat
• Meetup groups
• Conferences
• Blogs, comments
• Social news sites

I went to a conference at the end of May called Tech Cocktail. It was a forum/mixer for entrepreneurs, programmers and other technologists. The conference crowd was a good sampling of people that would make for a good audience for my site, tech-savvy and active in the community. While the conference did not focus on my topic specifically, the crowd it attracted was interested in solving problems involving technology, and are representative of the kind of people who are interested in using technology for social good.

An extremely popular tool among the conference goers was Twitter. It was an important communication tool that many of them used heavily.

In the course of writing and reporting, I’ve talked to a couple people who are active in the technology community, working in the Chicago area to address issues of social justice. Important parts of their work include Meetup groups and conferences.

• Fight big media Meetup
• Information Communication Technologies for International development Meetup
• The Young Chicago Social Profit Meetup

There is a website dedicated to connecting people working on digital divide issues called DigitalDivide.net. I’ve perused this site on a number of occasions. It looks like it could hold a lot of promise, however, it is difficult to use and has very little activity. Some of the pages look like they have been hijacked to post spam, and I was not able to successfully contact anyone through it.

Read Write Web is a great site that covers a lot of new media and social impact, social networking issues.

Tech Crunch, Engadget, Gizmodo and Ars Technica all have large communities with interests that overlap with what I can offer.

The community on Broadband Reports and MuniWireless discusses broadband issues almost exclusively.