Students at Elon College in North Carolina have completed a research project detailing how families in one typical upper-middle-class American neighborhood used the Internet during the week of Jan. 12-19. This study, titled “One Neighborhood, One Week on the Internet,” is the first ever to document Internet users’ personally recorded observations over a span of eight days combined with in-depth interviews.
The research is a partnership by the Elon School of Communications and the Pew Internet & American Life project, a Washington D.C.-based initiative that is exploring the Internet’s impact on American society. The two dozen families taking part in the study all live in a small, upscale neighborhood in the town of Elon College, N.C.
Most of the Internet users who participated in the project say going online has transformed their lives, providing crucial health information, facilitating job searches, transforming shopping habits, and most importantly, increasing communication among family and friends through e-mail and instant messaging.
“During the past year, we have collected extensive survey data that indicate nationwide trends in Internet use,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project. “This study by Elon students adds a new dimension, giving us personal stories that illustrate the tremendous effects the information age is having on the way we live our lives.”
This study is the first ever to combine Internet users’ personal observations in addition to in-depth interviews over a span of eight days. Each member of the 24 families in the study kept a daily diary of Internet use and participated in taped, focused discussions with the researchers. Their stories included the following anecdotes:
- families facing cancer, fibromyalgia, febrile seizures and gluten intolerance who used the Internet to research medical facts and communicate with others who face the same conditions
- several families who conduct daily communication with friends and relatives who live around the world
- several families members who were able to locate long-lost friends using Web people searches
- several families who have located and purchased specialized products and services, such as new and used cars, antique tools, topiary design, digital sound editing equipment and particular styles of carpeting and drapery fabric
- a family that located a product liability lawyer to consult about an accident
- several families that have done genealogy research, learning about their family’s history
- people who planned and booked complete vacation packages to Disney World, Nashville and Hawaii using Web travel sites
- youngsters who gather all the information, graphics and photos they need to complete school projects
- several families that have weekly instant messenger meeting times during which far-flung family members meet online to have chat sessions
“In the course of one week in one neighborhood, we encountered an amazing range of Internet uses,” says Elon faculty member Janna Q. Anderson, who led the class. “While most of the people we interviewed are downright excited about the wide-open possibilities they have found through communicating and doing research online, others are concerned about some changes being wrought by the digital information age.”
The student researchers gathered data from assigned families, wrote feature stories about those families and also wrote personal stories about the impact the Internet has had on their own families’ lives, providing the perspective of the emerging generation of Net-savvy users.
The Elon-Pew Internet Study findings, along with stories and photos of all the students and families involved, can be found on the Web at www.elon.edu/pew/oneweek.
Now that the information gathering in the neighborhood is complete, researchers from the Pew Internet Project will assist in analyzing the Elon findings and publicizing the study results.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project is a non-profit initiative of the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press and is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Over the course of the past year, the project has produced reports on the Internet’s influence on the workplace, young voters, churches, health care, the music industry, coverage of the Olympics and several other topics. The Pew project findings can be found online at www.pewinternet.org.