Broadband Adoption and Ethnographic Approaches

Abstract

Digital inequality scholarship has shifted toward an interest in the “tangible outcomes” of broadband adoption and the role individual attitudes may play in shaping digital engagement. However, much of this emerging research remains quantitative in nature and has not offered an extensive sociocultural explanation of why poor attitudes toward digital technology may endure in marginalized communities, or why broadband outcomes remain stratified by class and race. Ethnographic research is especially well-suited to fill this research gap. Critical ethnography offers a useful analytical toolbox: (a) providing a particularized portrait of everyday life; (b) rooting analysis within a social justice perspective; and (c) emphasizing building trust and “rapport” with marginalized communities, thus uncovering hidden practices or behaviors. In offering greater context to our understanding of digital attitudes and outcomes, ethnographic research can help digital inequality scholars further refine research questions, generate new categories of measurement, and better map complex sociotechnical relationships.