Media Report

Some new research on Australians and their use of the internet.

The first comes from the latest Sensis e-Business Report and the second from the Australian Arm of the World Internet Project and it honed in on the use and availability of broadband.Includes links to new research

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

And finally today, some new research on Australians and their use of the internet.

The first comes from the latest Sensis e-Business Report and what interests me here isn't so much the business side of it, but what they've found about the use of social media, particularly among the young. And by young, I mean young!

Here's the report's author, Christena Singh.

Christena Singh: We actually see the very young being very heavy users, and most people who are involved in this sort of technology in terms of social networking and Facebook sites and the like, are doing it several times a day. So they tend to be not just something that people are doing, but something that people do intensively.

Antony Funnell: And the very young, what are we talking about there? When are children starting to access the computer on a regular basis according to what you've discovered?

Christena Singh: We're seeing people saying that their children under the age of five are accessing the internet, and various online sites, which isn't surprising in this day and age. Certainly it's part of people's everyday lives and when children are in a household with people involved in the internet all the time, of course they're going to be doing that too. So we're seeing, most parents are saying that 34%, just over one in three of their children are visiting social network sites, are obviously getting much higher reporting of young people saying that they're doing this than the parents saying that they're doing this. But we are seeing quite a high percentage of people saying that they know their children visit social network sites, they know their children use online chatrooms, and two-thirds of Australians are fairly keen to ensure that they supervise their children when they're using the internet, because of all the dangers that that can involve.

Antony Funnell: But that's two-thirds, that's still one-third who aren't providing supervision. So that's quite a significant number isn't it, in terms of people opting to have a hands-off role?

Christena Singh: We are seeing one in two people saying that they aren't supervising their children, and certainly this is a message that's going out more and more, the importance for people to supervise their children while they are online or have some sort of knowledge of what their children are doing there. We're seeing over a third of people actually have some sort of internet content filter also on their sites. And when we're looking at when people actually stop supervising their children, usually it's between the age of 11 to 15 years, so that seems to be - obviously that's not an age at which people are out of danger using the internet, so that tends to be the most frequent age that people do tend to stop supervising their children.

Antony Funnell: Christena Singh, author of the Sensis e-Business Report. And you can find a link on our website.

Our second piece of research is due to be released today by the Australian arm of the World Internet Project and it honed in on the use and availability of broadband.

Now if you live as I do, in an inner metropolitan suburb and you have money to spend, you might naturally assume that almost all Australians use the internet and most have broadband. But that isn't the case.

In fact according to this research, one in five Australians have never used the internet, almost half don't have access to broadband at home and there are still a significant number of Australian households who are forced to use a much slower dial-up connection through lack of money or circumstances.

Heading the research team was Professor Julian Thomas from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Julian Thomas: One of the focuses of what were looking at was the difference between how people use the internet when they have an ordinary dial-up connection, the old-fashioned modem with a telephone, and the broadband connection. And what we found was that it really changes the entire way in which people access the information landscape available through the internet. It changes the dynamics of access. We found in particular that broadband seems to make a very significant difference to the way women use the internet. All of a sudden women are much more involved in what we think of as the creative uses of the internet, posting photographs, contributing to blogs, being involved in video, downloading music, all of those kinds of things, so yes, broadband seems to make an extraordinary difference to how people use the internet. It's almost like another medium.

Antony Funnell: And that's very different then isn't it, from what we know happens with traditional media, with television, with radio, where traditionally males have tended to dominate the way in which they are used, what's watched, what's listened to?

Julian Thomas: Yes, it's an old topic isn't it, in the sort of old social studies of how what we now call old media, the old electronic media, were used. And there's lots of research going back to the sort of 70s and 80s and 90s saying that 'Who controlled the television? Who controlled the remote control?' And the answer always seemed to be 'Men'. What seems to be happening now is that the use of the internet is becoming something which every member of the household can participate in.

Antony Funnell: So it's clear from this research that the government is on the right track, by pushing for fast-speed broadband if they want widespread internet usage, and if they want internet usage to increase dramatically.

Julian Thomas: For two reasons I think. First of all, as we're saying, broadband transforms the internet. But the second thing is (and this is the other thing that we found in our research) is that there is a persistent and serious digital divide, as we say, in terms of access to the internet. There is a real set of social divisions around who has access, what sort of access they have, where are they and who they are. And a lot of this is correlated to income. So poorer families on less than $50,000 a year, you really see that internet access is a major issue. If they have children, yes, they're more likely to have the net, but without kids, you're starting to see in that group of people, a quite high proportion of people who still have no internet access.

Antony Funnell: And that's despite the fact that computers are quite cheap now, and the internet, to engage with the internet, it's not the expense that it used to be.

Julian Thomas: That's right. It's become much cheaper over the years. I think it is still becoming cheaper actually, and we'll start to see I think as lower cost internet services improve, as the dial-up services start to disappear and easier to use low cost broadband services appear, we will start to see that group of people picking up the internet more. But this really does go to a very important policy question for government, in terms of designing this new broadband network. What sort of basic internet access will there be for people who don't have $120 a month to spend on a fabulous 3-in-1 internet, voiceover internet protocol, television on demand sort of service, what sort of basic internet service is there going to be for people who don't have a lot of money, especially when dial-up does disappear, what's going to replace that?

Antony Funnell: Because the indication from your research is that they will be left behind if the government doesn't assist them.

Julian Thomas: That's right. There'll need to be provision for that group and special attention to what they need.

Antony Funnell: Now one of the great truths about the internet that we hear all the time is that it's stealing viewers from television and from newspapers, from all traditional media. Now you've looked at this area. What did you find?

Julian Thomas: We found that this particular great truth is true, and it's true in an interesting way. Broadband again, is a key factor. When you introduce broadband then the changes in people's media consumption, what sort of media mix everybody has, really does start to have a big impact, and in that younger age group in particular, when you look at that group of people aged 30 or below, when they get broadband, about 60% of that group, a really substantial proportion, are saying they're watching less television. What I think is also really interesting there though is that as you get into older groups, groups which are more the traditional market for television, for free-to-air television and Pay-TV, you're also starting to see substantial numbers of people saying We're watching less television, when they get broadband.

But the interesting thing about that is that this is particularly about television. Broadband means that people are more engaged with the internet. It changes access, as I said. But it changes in particular the relationship between people and television. It doesn't make that much of a difference on some other media. So we also ask people for example about the effect that the internet had on the amount of time they spent reading books, and yes, it does make a bit of a difference, but it's nothing like the difference that it makes for television. We asked people about the effect of the internet on the amount of time they spend reading newspapers or magazines, and yes, it does make a bit of a difference, but nothing like the difference it makes for television. So it's quite striking that as the internet is evolving, is becoming an entertainment medium as well as everything else, you can really sort of see that people are shifting their time from TV to the net.

Antony Funnell: Now this research is not stand-alone research, it's part of longitudinal study and part of a global longitudinal study. What are the time frames to that study? When will the next lot of research that we can compare these results with, when will that come on?

Julian Thomas: We'll be doing some more basic research in Australia next year. What we're talking about now are findings from research we did at the end of last year, so we'll know more reasonably soon and before we do another general survey of the kind we're reporting on here, we're going to do some more detailed work, particularly around these creative uses of the internet that people are very interested in now. But as you said, we're also part of a global study and we're comparing what we're finding in Australia with what is going on overseas, and we're doing that work all the time, and we're going to be able to report on how exactly Australia fits in to the global picture with European countries, with countries in Asia and North and South America, in a few months' time.

Antony Funnell: Professor Julian Thomas, from the Swinburne University of Technology and from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Thanks to The Media Report's production team, Andrew Davies and Jim Ussher.

And next week on the program, the advertising industry and The Gruen Transfer.

I'm Antony Funnell, and this is ABC Radio National.

Guests

Prof Julian Thomas
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

Christena Singh
Author of Sensis e-Business Report

Further Information

Link to 2008 Sensis e-Business Report

Link to CCI research into broadband usage

Presenter

Antony Funnell

Producer

Andrew Davies

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