Electronic Networks: Enhancing Civic Life or Diverting Scarce Resources

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This pilot project will begin to study the impact of a community-based electronic network linking members of a rural Minnesota county. It will follow the development of an ambitious electronic network project (Grant Rapids Network/Itasca Regional Network, or GrandNet/IRNET) that seeks to link businesses, schools, government agencies and households in Itasca County, Minnesota. The project will focus on three fundamental values an electronic community can potentially affect: access to resources, equality of opportunity, and civic participation. To answer questions concerning whether groups are relatively advantaged or disadvantaged by this new development, and how it affects citizen involvement, a multi-method approach will be tested: The team will collect baseline information and compare it to similar indicators as the network is implemented. Team members will also administer small-scale surveys and undertake in-depth interviews and focus group sessions with relevant individuals and group representatives - including students, teachers, members of special sub-populations, civic leaders and network users -during the research period. The combination of multiple methods will help to assure that the results obtained are robust and useful to future communities considering the implementation of an electronic network. To share findings with interested researchers and policy-makers, the researchers will prepare conference presentations and journal-article manuscripts describing what they have learned about the implementation and early effects of the network.