Internet literacy for the digital age

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In light of the Rudd Government's plans to enforce internet censorship in Australia, this essay discusses the current state of research conducted by the Australian government in contrast with influential internet and digital literacy research from the UK.

Twenty years ago surfing this sea of information through a web of interconnected networks was an experience unfamiliar to the citizens of a soon-to-be global society. Nowadays it is widely practiced but still seemingly misunderstood in terms of digital or internet literacy, which remains a relatively new concept that is not yet widely taught as part of the curriculum in educational institutions throughout Australia.

Similarly, this was the case in the United Kingdom (UK) less than five years ago. The potential of the internet as a great resource for information and interactivity was widely accepted, and youth were proclaimed to be great navigators of this new technology. But as it turns out, “the gap between what children are actually doing and what their parents think they are doing is a lot larger than many people would have imagined” (Carr cited in Bober & Livingstone, 2005).


The UKCGO Project

It was through further comprehensive research that a clearer picture of internet literacy, with regard to children and their families, was formed through the UK Children Go Online (UKCGO) project. This project was established and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), an independent organisation funded by the UK Government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (ESRC, 2009).

The ESRC commissioned the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to conduct academic research as part of their ‘e-Society’ programme in collaboration with funding and advice from AOL, the National Children’s Home (NCH) now known as Action for Children, Childnet International, Citizens Online and the Office of Communications (Ofcom) which incorporates the now defunct Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) and Independent Television Commission (ITC). Members from these organisations also served as part of the project’s ‘Children’s Advisory Panel’.

Through the collaboration of these non profit, corporate, academic, government and independent organisations came the ‘UK Children Go Online’ project. This project paved the way for stimulating public awareness of the sociological implications surrounding children’s internet usage. Through media coverage, further research, education programmes and government initiatives, the research from this project still continues to influence society’s understanding of the media-audience relationship with the internet to the present day.

Research from the UKCGO project has played a key role in government debate as actioned by Baroness Susan Greenfield in the House of Lords during April 2006, which provided a basis for further consultation with other government departments such as the Home Office Internet Task Force and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) which has since been replaced by The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS).

More recently the research from this project was used as evidence during the ‘Byron Review’ in the House of Commons during July of last year where UKCGO’s project researcher, Professor Livingstone, was called upon as a witness for the Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in the House of Commons and spoke of findings from the UKCGO project (HC 353-II, 2007-2008). Based upon this research among other works, the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) was then established in September 2008 to develop and maintain a Child Internet Safety Strategy (Byron Review, 2008).

This report has not only been significant within the UK or European countries but has influenced international initiatives such as the annual ‘Safer Internet Day’ where this year’s theme of ‘Social Networking and Cyber Bullying’ is based upon research from the ‘Good Practice Guidance for the Providers of Social Networking and Other User Interactive Services’ released in 2008, which draws upon findings from Livingstone’s UKCGO project work.

The reason for this ongoing popularity of the findings from the UKCGO project is due to the comprehensive nature of the studies conducted. The research methodologies employed in the project comprise of quantitative and qualitative techniques which involve a large number of participants. As CEO of Childnet International, Stephen Carrick-Davies, points out in the UKCGO final report: “This is the largest body of academic research on children’s use of technology ever to happen in the UK.”

Another unique aspect of the project is that it goes beyond preceding secondary research which traditionally focused on quantitative audits of factors such as internet usage patterns and perceptions or “small-scale, qualitative work” (Livingstone, 2003 as cited in Bober & Livingstone, 2004). The research methodologies used in the UKCGO project differs by delving into the qualitative aspects of the media-audience relationship based on a uses-and-gratifications and ethnographic model which was centrally focused on the niche market of children in families on a national scale. “The study is unique in that it reveals the thoughts and feelings of young people themselves about the digital age in which they are living” (Biz/ed, 2005).

The shortcomings of adopting a rigid approach can limit the effectiveness of audience research. As Kerr, Kücklich and Brereton (2006) note, the uses-and-gratifications model “is unable to deal with variations in media experience” involving socio-economic and cultural media consumption, and that:

Conventional textual analysis tries to make visible the latent and inherent meanings and pleasures to be found in a text, but this approach can be problematic when applied to new media, where the text is far from static, and is most useful when combined with work that explores how users actually interpret and use the text.

According to Livingstone’s ‘End of Award Report’ (2005), the research was designed using secondary research information and consultation with the ‘Children’s Advisory Panel’ who assisted in forming survey designs and providing guidance throughout the project. Quality control was achieved by forming an ethics policy through external consultation with a number of organisations, and quality check interviews by the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) conducted after the project found that the “10% of respondents [interviewed] reported few or no problems”.

In order to explore the media-audience relationship of children and the internet through the uses-and-gratifications and ethnographic models, qualitative methods were adopted to gauge a child’s comprehension of the technology. Where previous studies have focused on familiarity with the internet and computer technology, the UKCGO project also measures their proficiency by determining how well children implement the technology to benefit their lives in what Livingstone describes as “internet literacy”.

To achieve this, the project’s research was conducted in three phases involving over 1500 children and their parents. The quantitative methods were employed in a “national, in-home, 40-minute face to face survey of 1511 9-19 year olds and 906 parents of the 9-17 year olds, using Random Location sampling across the UK” (Bober & Livingstone, 2005) to establish “social, economic and cultural patterning of internet-related interests, beliefs and practices among children and young people” (Bober & Livingstone, 2004). During phases 1 and 3, qualitative methods in terms of focus group discussions, mind mapping exercises, depth and/or paired depth interviews, and direct in-home observations of internet use were employed to collect data amongst children, parents and five youth web producers from varied social groups.

These qualitative methods were not only appropriate, but necessary in order to meet the project’s objectives, specifically in providing “in-depth qualitative data on the emerging place of the internet in children and young people’s lives”, and also to “ensure that children’s own voices are heard in public and policy debates” (Livingstone, 2005). This could not have been accomplished using quantitative methods alone and thus the combination of both quantitative and qualitative techniques have proved successful in representing scalable differences and commonalities from results arising within a subjective, individual user experience.


An Australian perspective

With the Rudd Government’s introduction of national reforms as part of the Australian ‘Education Revolution’ involving the rollout of thousands of computers across schools and the introduction of the ‘Education Tax Refund’ returning 50 per cent of costs associated with computer and internet expenses, Australia is still yet to produce internet related, child centred research that matches the comprehensive nature of the UKCGO project.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008): “in 2007-08, 67 percent of Australian households had home Internet access and 75 percent of households had access to a computer”. Digital media technology has already established its presence as commonplace in everyday Australian life, and with this presents new educational and social challenges. “Technology will do you no good unless you have men and women who know how to take advantage of it,” News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch said during the Boyer Lectures last November. “Societies that want to prosper in this new age need to cultivate a spirit of learning and flexibility and achievement”.

Yet ‘digital literacy’ is a relatively new term only recently being discussed within Government, as introduced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) ‘Families and Media Literacy Research Forum’ during September 2008, where the ACMA’s Strategic Research Section Manager, Lesley Osborne, announced that the “ACMA’s digital literacy research program is still in its early days”.

Some of the research cited during this digital literacy forum were from preceding ACMA reports conducted in 2007 and 2005 with updates pertaining to youth in 2008, which used qualitative methods by way of phone interviews, surveys and a “self-complete time-use diary” (ACMA, 2007) although the 2007 ACMA report does cite the UKCGO Survey (2006) as part of the research literature reviewed for the report. However, these previous ACMA reports did not employ focus groups or in home observations and discussion of internet usage particularly with relation to children, nor did the ACMA research collaborate with a large number of organisations to incorporate their guidance as an advisory body, in relation to survey design or methodologies used.

With the Rudd (2008) Government’s “evidence-based policy” approach to decision making, it is crucial that Australia draws upon the research methodologies seen in the UKCGO project, among other studies, to establish a clear understanding of the state of digital literacy within the nation as a way forward to addressing key issues pertaining to educational needs, regulation and best practice guidelines.

Research of the magnitude seen in the UKCGO project has already shaped government policy within the UK and influenced many other studies following the release of its findings. The issues raised through the project’s research such as child safety on the internet, lack of internet literacy education and the effects of socio-economic status on access to facilities affect not only children and their parents but society as a whole. It is as Buckingham (2007) notes:

The increasing convergence of contemporary media means that we need to be addressing the skills and competencies – the multiple literacies – that are required by the whole range of contemporary forms of communication.

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