Internet cultures and internet use in 2013: what the Oxford Internet Survey tells us and what we still want to know

Citation

Gorman, G.E. (2013), "Internet cultures and internet use in 2013: what the Oxford Internet Survey tells us and what we still want to know", Online Information Review, Vol. 37 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-10-2013-0232

Internet cultures and internet use in 2013: what the Oxford Internet Survey tells us and what we still want to know

Article Type: Editorial From: Online Information Review, Volume 37, Issue 6

If you are not yet familiar with the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and its excellent research and publications, then it is time to overcome this gap in your knowledge. Since 2003, the Institute’s Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) has been appearing biennially (the sixth iteration released on 1 October 2013). According to the OII website, the Survey “is designed to offer detailed insights into the influence of the Internet on everyday life in Britain”, providing detailed information about Internet access, use and attitudes in the UK.

With publication of OxIS 2013 (Dutton et al., 2013), the survey can be confirmed as an essential guide to understanding the internet and its impact on the e-world. As with previous surveys, this edition is replete with interesting and valuable insights into how Britons perceive and use the internet in their professional, educational and leisure lives. Whilst the various findings in themselves make fascination reading, we wish to turn to two specific aspects of how data are analysed and suggest additional work by OII aimed at improving our understanding of Internet use and wider applications of the data.

The first of these aspects focuses on what OxIS 2013 calls “Five cultures of the internet” (p. 4). The five cultures discussed in OxIS 2013 may be summarised in the following way (all references from p. 4 of the survey).

E-mersives (12 per cent of British internet users) are “comfortable and naturally at home in the online world and happy being online. They are pleased to use the internet as an escape, to pass time online”. And they also regard the internet as an entry into the online community.

Techno-pragmatists (17 per cent) “stand out by the centrality they accord to using the internet to save time and make their lives easier.” They share similarities with the e-mersives, in that they feel in control of the internet, and use it to “enhance the efficiency of their day-to-day life and work”. At the same time, however, the internet is not a form of escapism for them, and rarely a source of “fun”.

Cyber-savvy users (19 per cent) are rather less positive than e-mersives or techno-pragmatists about the Internet, expressing somewhat ambivalent views:

On the one hand, they enjoy being online, in order to pass time, easily find information, and become part of a community in which they can escape and meet people. On the other hand, they also feel as if the Internet is, to a greater or lesser degree, taking control of their lives, because it can be frustrating, wastes time and invades their privacy.

Nevertheless, the cyber-savvy do fully exploit the internet for information, entertainment and social networking.

Cyber-moderates (a significant 37 per cent) are “[…] more moderate in their view of the Internet as a good place to pass the time, an efficient way to find information or shop, or a good way to maintain and enhance their social relationships”. At the same time they may express some, but not extensive, reservations about exposure to unwanted materials and abuse of their privacy on the internet. In this sense they are moderates with regard to their use of and views of the internet.

Adigitals (14 per cent) do not “feel that the internet makes them more efficient, nor do they enjoy being online simply to pass the time or escape from the real world.” To members of this culture, the Internet is likely to be seen primarily as outside their control and therefore not to be trusted.

As just this small taste of how the five cultures are described and utilised in OxIS 2013 suggests, we have some powerfully descriptive categories of UK internet users that are likely to determine how we perceive Internet use well into the future. In my view the five cultures are set to have as great an impact as Hofstede’s Dimensions of Culture or Rogers” Diffusion of Innovation have had and continue to have; indeed, one can sense some aspects of both Hofstede et al. (2010) and Rogers (2013) here, and it would be useful to have more information from OII researchers on how the five cultures have been derived.

This is the first task that I would set out as something of interest to this journal and the wider scholarly community: a full discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of the OxIS five cultures.

The second task is to determine the robustness of this paradigm. That is, to what extent has (the British) cultural context shaped the five cultures? Alongside this, we wish to have investigations of how transferrable the five cultures might be to other contexts. In other words, can we, and if so how, take this paradigm beyond the UK and apply it in both developed and developing countries, as we have been able to do successfully with Hofstede and Rogers?

Alongside the five cultures of the internet, OxIS 2013 also opens a new discussion on how people use the internet. In earlier surveys the focus was principally on whether or not people used the internet. “However, as the diversity of use increases, it is less valuable to focus on merely whether or not a person uses the internet, and more valuable to focus on how and why they use it” (p. 25). This has now become a full discussion in OxIS 2013, employing four categories of use (pp. 26-30):

Information seeking – the question asked: “Where would you go first if you were looking for information on […]” (e.g. internet, telephone, book, personal contact, etc.).

Entertainment – the question asked: ““How frequently do you use the Internet for the following purposes?” (e.g. photos, music, games, sexual content, etc.).

Online services (buying and using services online) – the question asked: “Within the last year, how frequently have you used the internet for the following purposes?”

Creativity and production – the question asked: “How frequently do you use the internet for the following purposes?” (e.g. post photos, visit social network sites, post messages, write a blog, etc.).

Whilst these may be entirely valid categories of use, OxIS 2013 makes no attempt to justify this, or explain the categories” derivation. This needs to be done.

Second, to what extent do categories overlap, or to what extent are they mutually exclusive? There should be full methodological discussion of these questions.

Third, are these terms and their applications actually valid; if so, based on what evidence? This is not discussed or placed in the context of the extensive user behaviour literature – it should be.

Fourth, do we yet know whether these categories can be applied or adapted to other cultural contexts? One hopes we might begin to see research on this as a means of determining the global robustness of the categories. Can they be adapted for use in other cultures?

Memo to OII

Overall OxIS 2013 offers a stimulating and insightful discussion of many aspects of the internet world. However, there are some substantive issues arising from the report that we hope OII researchers might address in order to improve the robustness and long-term value of OxIS-derived insights, especially as related to categories of users and user behaviour.

G.E. Gorman

References

Dutton, W.H., Blank, G. and Groselj, D. (2013), Cultures of the Internet: The Internet in Britain, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, available at: http://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/sites/oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/files/content/files/publications/OxIS&_V2013.pdf

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J. and Minkov, M. (2010), Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY

Rogers, E.M. (2013), Diffusion of Innovations, Simon & Shuster/Free Press, New York, NY