Policy experiments and the digital divide: understanding the context of internet adoption in remote Aboriginal communities

Aboriginal households in remote Australia are far less likely than other Australians to have an Internet connection at home. Until recently, telecentres were the preferred policy approach to addressing the digital divide, as these were assumed to be most appropriate given the 'communal' lifestyle of Aboriginal communities. In this chapter, I discuss a 4-year research project, in which three outstations, two Indigenous organizations, a consumer peak body and a group of university researchers, set out to test that assumption by bringing Internet into 20 homes. The chapter focuses on the research approach, and how the project revealed dimensions of the digital divide that were not observable through statistics or other methods.