Internet Research 7.0

The following papers were submitted as part of the Internet Research 7.0 conference held in Brisbane in September of 2006. If you presented at the conference and would like your paper to appear here, you may place it here yourself, or send it to help@aoir.org for assistance.

Peter Adams - The complexity of the purchase decision – a barrier to broadband adoption for mainstream consumers
Greg Adamson - Combining perspectives to understand the Internet
Slavka Antonova - Deconstructing an experiment in global Internet governance: the ICANN case
P. Bellaby, S. Lindsay, S. Smith, & F. Bell - Can ICT empower the multiply deprived? Older men and women with heart disease in a...
Leo Berkeley - Situating Machinima in the New Mediascape
Kathleen Burnett - When Small Worlds Don’t Overlap, Or Why Aren’t Latinas Participating in the U.S. Information Technology W
Hardeep Chahal & Ruchi Kohli - Application of IT Enabled Services (ITES) in Small Scale Industries of Ludhiana Region, India
Christy Dena - How the Internet is Holding the Centre of Conjured Universes

This exploratory study set out to address two issues:
1. Do the existing quantitative technology adoption models provide a good starting point for the key indicators as to why households adopt a broadband Internet connection?
2. What are the emerging themes which require further study to provide a richer understanding of why a household adopts a broadband Internet connection?
The most consistent theme to emerge revolved around the complexity of making the purchase decision. This work indicates study of the process of how consumers move from commitment to purchase, may provide deeper insights into why households adopt technology like broadband Internet.

How can researchers approach an inherently multi-disciplinary subject such as the Internet? Each field of research has its own perspective or perspectives. The technologist is a problem solver. The business researcher has a perspective of competitive advantage. The media theorist understands the unique character of communication media. This paper looks at cross-field misunderstanding and describes an approach of developing and then integrating multiple perspectives. This was developed for multi-disciplinary doctoral research on commercial Internet investment difficulties in the period 1995 to 2003, which combined five perspectives: historical, technical, media, regulatory and business theory.

The model of a global multistakeholder collaboration in Internet domain-name system management, as developed by U.S. government in 1998 and embedded in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), held all the promises of a paradigm shift in global governance. Seven years later, the UN World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia (November 2005) adopted some of the vocabulary of the ICANN experiment and recognized the multistakeholder collaboration as a key organizational principle in global Internet governance. Yet, it reestablished the leading role of national governments and intergovernmental organizations, such as the ITU, in the regulation of the global Internet.
This paper examines what was lost during the four years of experimenting with “multistakeholderism” in ICANN and what the stakes of the parties that influenced the policymaking process the most were. Building on Governmentality Studies’ understanding of the neo-liberal project of self-governance and Organization Studies’ collaboration theory, the document and discourse analysis of ICANN’s practices deconstructs the original model of a collaborative policymaking process conducted by a private multistakeholder corporation and formulates the expectations, stakes and strategies of the participating parties. Thus, it is suggested in the paper that, because the Internet technical elite was granted the managerial role in ICANN, the experts were able to influence the agenda of the policymaking process and its pace, and ultimately to take over the policy-proposal accumulation task and eliminate the working groups, which were open to all participants.

Susceptibility to change often arises when normal rhythm is broken, as with a heart attack. Yet having a heart attack often reduces a patient’s trust in their practitioner. The least ambiguous health messages (smoking) may seem pertinent for the first time, but not the more subtle (diet, exercise). What still has to be provided then is the support of others for a feasible transition to a new regime. This might be most effective when people who share the habitus change together. Can communicating with each other through the Internet enable this for deprived older men and women with heart disease?

This paper investigates the emerging internet phenomenon of machinima, which has been described as a convergence between computer games, films and the Web. Looking both forward and back, machinima uses 3D game engines and networked environments to produce work that is primarily traditional, linear and narrative. Through my research, which included a practice-based component producing a machinima that screened at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in New York, I argue that one of the most distinctive features of the form is not apparent in the finished work but occurs in the player/game interaction of the production process.

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a well known and well used teaching methodology. Most current literature points to McMaster University in Canada with the introduction of PBL into its medical schools in the 1960's, but its intellectual history is much older. Thomas Corts of Samford University sees PBL as “a newly recovered style of learning”. From these beginnings PBL has been incorporated into a wide range of professional studies including nursing, dentistry, social work, management, engineering and architecture.

In the rush to tap into new markets and to take up new technologies many academics and institutions have turned to online education. However, PBL does not seem to have made the leap fully into online education. The use of discussion boards, chat facilities and web resources are still not being fully utilised to take up the advantages of this paradigm. There are only a limited number of references to PBL in distance education. Of available references to group based cooperative learning nearly all require at least some face-to-face meetings of the team members. This does not make full use of the available technology and means that students need to physically meet.

This paper investigates the literature regarding PBL in the online setting. It demonstrates that by appropriate application of both technology and sound teaching PBL can be successfully used to deliver the required educational outcomes whilst taking advantage of a diverse student profile. Our Faculty has introduced a fully online PBL course to first year engineering and surveying students. The course relies entirely on internet based communication and resources and requires no face to face meetings. Students are located across Australia and the world, often in different time zones. They successfully communicate and solve a range of contextualised engineering problems, facilitated by an academic staff member. The course successfully integrates student diversity (age, culture, education backgrounds) and appropriate technology (chat, discussion and web) to enable students to participate in team based assessments. In the process, students learn teamwork, communication skills, use of internet based technology as well as discipline specific technical knowledge.

When Small Worlds Don’t Overlap, Or Why Aren’t Latinas Participating in the U.S. Information Technology Workforce?

Dr. Kathleen Burnett, Associate Professor
Florida State University College of Information

This paper discusses an in-progress cross-cultural analysis of the factors that motivate and de-motivate women’s participation in the information technology (IT) workforce. Globally, women’s participation in the IT workforce is at the top of national agendas, but even within the U.S. a scant and conceptually flawed research base makes it difficult to address the precipitous decline in women’s participation in IT education and the IT workforce. In 2001, 11,900 women received bachelor’s degrees in computer science (27%) down from 15,126 or 33% in 1986. The figures for the IT workforce are no more promising. In 1999, only 316,700 women (27%) held positions in this workforce, down from 305,400 or 31% in 1993. Previous studies have treated the problem as though all women shared common experiences and backgrounds, and therefore, adopted similar if not identical gender roles. Why then is it that although 29% of computer scientists were female in 2004, in 2003 only 1% were female and Hispanic, 3% female and African-American, and 4% female and Asian? These disparities point to an obvious flaw in the previous research: women ? gender role. A more sophisticated, feminist approach to the research is required to account for the differences and to provide a platform for meaningful change.

In the present tech-savvy, internet and global economy, the information technology Enabled Services (ITES) play a prominent and progressive role in the organizational growth & development and considered as an essential tool for organizations survival in the collaborative, commercial & competitive periphery. In this connection, the present study tries to assess the extent of usage of various ITES with respect to various IT-backed services such as number & type of computer hardware, communication hardware and structure cabling, Internet, web and e-business solutions, standard & application software and software solutions such as ERP, CRM etc. and their impact in terms of business transactions & customer satisfaction, efficiency, market share, profit, cost of production, lead-time and number of employees on the performance of business enterprises operating in Ludhiana region, Punjab, India. The Ludhiana sector, considered as Manchester of India was purposely selected because of the heavy concentration of industries. Out of ten clusters, three heavily concentrated clusters were selected with the help of District Industries Centres members. Further using Amarjit Trade Series (2004-05) directory, 102 technological advanced small-scale industries (SSIs) were identified on the basis of their e-mail & website addresses. The questionnaire/schedule, based on open & closed ended statements, was used to collect the relevant data from selected SSIs of three clusters.