Nancy’s Blog

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, probably the best source of data on Americans’ use of the internet and related technlogies, has released a new report: Mobile Access to Data and Information.

A personal note: I love having internet access on my cellphone. I use it to check email, and to do searches. Often when I’m out and around I check on addresses, business hours, and other information that makes my life easier. I use Google Maps for directions. I’ll even check book reviews while I’m in a bookstore.

I feared that having email on my phone would tether me to email,  but instead it frees me from my computer.  For example, I can recheck details on a meeting while in transit, or check for updates from someone I’m supposed to be meeting.  And I can do email during interstitial time.  It’s too hard to key long notes, but often all I do is delete unnecessary email or key a short reply.

From Pew:

Some 62% of adult Americans have taken advantage of mobile access to digital data and tools. The Pew Internet Project’s new report, entitled Mobile Access to Data and Information, examines mobile access in two ways and finds that:

58% of adult Americans have used a cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) to do at least one of ten mobile non-voice data activities, such as texting, emailing, taking a picture, looking for maps or directions, or recording video.

41% of adult Americans have logged onto the internet on the go, that is, away from home or work either with a wireless laptop connection or a handheld device.

Overall, 62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA, according to the Pew Internet Project’s December 2007 survey.

From Pew:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released their Broadband Adoption 2007 report.

The report finds that nearly half (47%) of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection at home, according to a February 2007 survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The percentage of Americans with broadband at home has grown from 42% in early 2006 and 30% in early 2005. Among individuals who use the internet at home, 70% have a high-speed connection while 23% use dialup.

The 12% growth rate from 2006 to 2007 represents trails the 40% increase in the 2005 to 2006 timeframe, when many people in the middle-income and older age groups acquired home broadband connections. Those groups continued to show increases in home broadband adoption into early 2007, but at lower rates than in the past.

For the full report, please visit:
http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=217

From Pew Internet and American Life Project (emphasis added):

A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users

Fully 85% of American adults use the internet or cell phones - and most se both. Many also have broadband connections, digital cameras and ideo game systems. Yet the proportion of adults who exploit the connectivity, the capacity for self expression, and the interactivity of modern information technology is a modest 8%.

Fully half of adults have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology. Some of this diffidence is driven by eople’s concerns about information overload; some is related to people’s sense that their gadgets have more capacity than users can master; some is connected to people’s sense that things like blogging and creating home-brew videos for YouTube is not for them; and some is rooted in people’s inability to afford or their unwillingness to buy the gear that would bring them into the digital age.

These findings come from the Pew Internet Project’s typology of information and communication technology (ICT) users. The typology categorizes Americans based on the amount of ICTs they possess, how they use them, and their attitudes about the role of ICTs are in their lives. Ten separate groups emerge in the typology.

What kind of information technology user are you? Answer a few questions to see where you fit in the new typology of information and communication technology users developed by the Pew Internet Project. Take our quiz here:
http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/

Update: I took their quiz and was classified as an omnivore – here’s what they say about omnivores, who make up 8% of the population — i.e., that’s where they get the 8% figure above:

They are young, ethnically diverse, and mostly male (70%). The median age is 28; just more than half of them are under age 30, versus one in five in the general population. Over half are white (64%) and 11% are black (compared to 12% in the general population). English-speaking Hispanics make up 18% of this group. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many (42% versus the 13% average) of Omnivores are students.

Panel at International Visual Studies Association Conference, New York, Aug. 10-12:

New image-making and sharing technologies

Chair: Nancy Van House (School of Information, University of California, Berkeley)

New image-making and sharing technologies are transforming personal photography: digital cameras, cameraphones, and internet-based image sharing have rapidly permeated the world of personal photography. The ways in which non-expert users take up, re-interpret, and adapt new technologies (or fail to adopt them) are of interest in many fields of research: with new photography-related technologies, we have a case of widely-successful innovation. Personal photographers are using these new technologies in ways both continuous with prior purposes and practices, and in new ways. The changing technological and material bases of personal photography serve both to make visible previously taken-for-granted practices and uses of images, and to enable new ones.

On this panel, we will discuss these new technologies and such issues as: emerging uses of images; the changing (and persistent) place of personal photography in construction of identity and social relationships; the division between public and private, as private images become more public, intentionally or otherwise; the shift from individual to collective image making and use; the uses of cameraphone images; the changing nature of memory via image-making and archiving; and images in social networking, including on sites like MySpace.com and Flickr.com.

For further information or to send abstracts or completed papers please contact: Nancy Van House (School of Information, University of California, Berkeley) Email: vanhouse@sims.berkeley.edu

IVSA meets in New York City, Aug 10-12. For the complete call and list of panels, see http://www.visualsociology.org/proposals.html

In an article about this, Lehnert is quoted as saying that they were surprised that so few teens reported using social networking sites.

55% of online teens use social networks and 55% have created online profiles; older girls predominate

To read the full report, please visit:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp

More than half (55%) of all of online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Among the key findings:

* 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
* 66% of teens who have created a profile say that their profile is not visible to all internet users.
* 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often; 26% visit once a day, 22% visit several times a day.
* Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles; 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with 54% of older boys, and 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only 57% of older boys have done so.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has published a new report on US internet use.

Some key findings:

• While 73% of American adults use the internet, that drops to 32% of those over 65.
• More homes have high-speed access (62%) than dial-up (34%).
• While 91% of internet users have sent email, only 8% report ever having blogged (Feb-April 2006). Thirty-nine percent have read someone else’s blog.
• Among internet users, 66% use the internet on a typical day; 53% send email on a typical day.
• Only 4% admit to ever “downloading or sharing adult content online.”
• Sixty-seven percent of internet users have bought something online (as of Sept 2005).
• Twenty-five percent have downloaded music (Dec ‘05).
  

The Pew Internet Project has a new report on Bloggers, available from: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp.

Excerpts:
A new, national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers…

The blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults, or about 8% of adult internet users and that the number of blog readers has jumped to 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population.

* 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else;
* 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.
* Women represent 46% of bloggers and men 54%.
* 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.
* When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is “my life and experiences.”

Bloggers are also heavy users of the nternet in general. Forty-four percent of bloggers have taken material
they find online - like songs, text, or images - and remixed it into their own artistic creation…. A whopping 77% of bloggers have shared something online that they created themselves, like their own artwork, photos, stories, or videos. By comparison, 26% of internet users have done this.

“[T] this survey shows that most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression,” said Lenhart. “Blogs make it easy to document individual experiences, share practical knowledge, or just keep in touch with friends and family.”

* 87% of bloggers allow comments on their blog.
* 72% of bloggers post photos to their blog.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has created an online version of the Blogger Callback telephone survey and invites participation from the general public. The resulting answers will not be a representative sample, but the online survey will give observers a chance to see the questions in context and to comment on some specific aspects of blogging. The survey is online at the following address:
http://www.psra.com/PewBloggerSurvey.html

Comment: for people interested in survey research and studies of technology use, this is very useful — SEE the survey, and take it yourself.