Projects

Good Net or Bad Net? The Social and Political Consequences of New ICTs

Aims

To assess the impact of the spread of Internet access and use on the level and distribution of social capital & civic engagement in Britain.
To identify the kinds of Internet use and the kinds of Internet users where the impact of the Internet on social capital & civic engagement is most apparent
To examine how the impact of Internet access on social capital & civic engagement changes with greater familiarity over time
In addition, the project will be able to provide a detailed exposition of the changing demographic pattern of Internet access and usage in Britain

Methodology

A module of 60 questions will be placed on the 2003 and 2005 British Social Attitudes survey. In both years over 3,500 face to face interviews will take place using a random sample of the British public. The National Centre for Social Research´s British Social Attitudes series has followed, charted and interpreted the ebbs and flows in the nation´s social values since the early 1980s. We envisage that the data provided by this project should be a resource for the whole programme and will therefore be willing to facilitate early access to the data for other programme participants.

Keywords

Soical capital; social trust; particiaption; civic engagement; disengagement; Internet use; digital divivde

Publications

C. Bromley, ‘Can Britain Close the Digital Divide?’, in A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, C. Bromley and M. Phillips (eds.), British Social Attitudes: the 21 st report, London: Sage, 2004.

J. Curtice and P. Norris, ‘e-politics? The impact of the internet on political trust and participation’, in A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, C. Bromley and M. Phillips (eds.), British Social Attitudes: the 21 st report, London: Sage, 2004

J. Curtice and P. Norris, 'Isolates or socialites? The social ties of internet users', in A. Park, J. Curtice, K. Thomson, M. Phillips and M. Johnson (eds.), British Social Attitudes: the 23rd report: Perspectives on a changing society (London, Sage, 2007).

P. Norris and J. Curtice, ‘If you build a political website, will they come?’ International Journal of Electronic Government
Research, forthcoming.

P. Norris, Developments in Party Communications, Washington: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 2005

P. Norris, ‘the Impact of the Internet on Political Activism: Evidence from Europe’, International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 1 (1): 19-39.

P. Norris and J. Curtice,  'Getting the Message Out: A two-step model of the role of the internet in campaign communication flows during the 2005 British General Election' (Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 31 Aug-3 Sept; revised version at E-society research programme conference, Univ. of York, 18-19 Sept.)

Engagement with potential Research Users (outside the academic community):

The digital divide findings were presented at a seminar hosted by OFCOM in November 2004 looking at low-income consumers and technology. A seminar at which the results of the project to date were presented was held at the House of Commons in March 2005 in collaboration with the Hansard Society and the All Party Group on the Internet. Pippa Norris has prepared a report for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which was published in February 2005. An article about the 2003 survey was published in the spring 2005 Social Research Association newsletter.