For Jeffrey Cole, the idea to launch a multi-year international
study of the Internet came to him one day in 1998.
It occurred to him when he read that television viewing for kids
under the age of 14 was down for the first time in history, mostly
due to an increase in Internet use.
“If the Internet could draw kids away from television,
then it could do anything,” said Cole, director of the UCLA
Center for Communication Policy.
Cole’s survey, which was released last week and organized
by the center, is the first of its kind. It surveyed approximately
2,000 people in 14 countries on their ability and willingness to
connect to the Internet.
The countries participating in the survey were responsible for
providing the collected information to the center, which organized
and compared the data.
Cole emphasized the importance of his study, saying while
television was used mostly as a form of entertainment, the Internet
encompasses both work and play, and as such there was a real need
to study this relatively new technology.
“We should have done a similar study with television when
it was first becoming a bigger player in people’s lives, but
we did not. (This survey) is our chance to track the development of
a new medium,” Cole said.
The survey yielded some interesting results. Contrary to some
popular myths that paint Internet users as antisocial couch
potatoes, the survey found that Internet users typically spend less
time watching TV than non-users, and the former spend more time
participating in social activities than people who do not use the
Internet.
The survey also showed increases in Internet use in every
country surveyed, but with an average 8 percent gap between men and
women users.
It also illustrated the economic gap in Internet use. The U.S.
data showed that 89 percent of people with the highest income
bracket are signing online, as opposed to 43 percent of users in
the lowest income bracket.
“It’s good that almost half the poorest people in
the country are online, but it is still only half as much as their
richer counterparts. There is still room for improvement,”
Cole said.
The completion of the survey meant a lot of data work for the
center, especially because four years ago the project consisted of
only three countries: the United States, Italy and Singapore.
“Initially it wasn’t a rational linking of the
world, but there was interest from people in other countries, and
they approached us and asked if they could join,” said
Michael Suman, research director at the center and lecturer in
communication studies.
The survey has garnered international attention. In a statement
released last week, George Yeo, minister for trade industry in
Singapore, noted the importance of the study.
“We in Singapore are delighted to take part in this
international research effort. The results will be of great
interest to us,” Yeo said.
The study has also collected praise from many government and
business officials, such as America Online Chairman Steve Case and
former vice president Al Gore.
“The Internet is a very powerful tool that is changing the
way we work, the way we live and the way we learn,” Gore said
in a statement. “Jeff Cole has been a true visionary in
providing the public with information on how to understand the
impact of media.”
Apart from acting as a tracking tool, the survey has many other
potential uses, said researchers at the center.
“We can hope the survey will be of use to academics, the
press, government officials, corporations, and just interesting to
the general public,” Suman said.
As organizers of the survey, the center had the dual role of
collecting the United States data and organizing the worldwide
results.
The first task was accomplished by a telephone survey conducted
in both English and Spanish. The surveyed people were, for the most
part, the same the center had used from the beginning of its
U.S.-based study from four years ago.
Cole said the center had to use an identical base of respondents
in order to track changing patterns in Internet use over time and
determine whether people who have not been using the Internet in
previous years are now online.
Initially, the center tried to collect data from countries where
the Internet has grown the fastest, Cole said. However, because so
many research institutions approached the center, the countries
that wound up on the survey are as much a coincidence as anything
else.
Currently, the center has 24 countries as their partners, with
12 of them providing complete data for the survey, two giving
partial data, and still more expected to join the center’s
survey in the future.
Cole remains optimistic about the future of the survey, and he
recently came back from a visit to Africa where he tried to find
partners for future studies.
“The survey released this year is not a complete list,
rather it is where we are now; it is just a really good
start,” he said.