Barjäärid Interneti kasutajaks hakkamisel 45−60-aastaste meeste näitel
Date
2007
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
In this survey I was looking for the reasons why certain group of mid-aged men in
Estonia (in age 45−60 years) are not using Internet or barely using it. In 2002, Estonian
Informatics Centre performed a survey called „Digital Divide and The Possibilities to
Overcome it in Estonia” (EMOR, PRAXIS 2002) and it showed that one of the biggest
group of non-users (27% of the non-users) is amongst mid-aged men that have lower
education and income.
In order to get detailed info and attitude from the target group I used in-depth interviews
as an information gathering method and later analyzed performed interviews using
qualitative data analysis of the text.
Target group consisted of 8 men in age of 45 to 58 years of which three were frequent
users, three were light users and two were non-users. Each respondent was put to specific
group by his Internet usage characteristics.
In qualitative data anlysis I encoded the data to the topics and picked the quotes of each
respondents answers regarding the topic, then interpreting those quotes. Based on
gathered info I made tables with general keywords from the interviewee to give a
compact overwview of the results. At the beginning of the survey I formulated three main
questions to which the results of the study should have give the answers:
1. Why are todays non- or random users what they are?
2. What are the possibilities of transforming them to users?
3. What was the main reason todays users became users?
Based on the analysis of the previous studies regarding the subject I also formulated four
hypothesises:
1. Thanks to the development of the general economics of Estonia, fast development of
the infotechnological sector and the rapidly growing number of Internet users, the access
barrier is gone.
2. As access barrier is no longer present, the biggest obstacle is the lack of everlasting
will and habit to learn. This habit (or lack of it) is of deeply sociological origin and hard
to overcome.
3. Very important obstacle is language barrier: when user is not fluent in
English/Estonian, he/she has only limited access to Internet resources.
4. Internet access is more important to people who live outside the cities, because the
could benefit more from the services Internet provides.
Analysis of the interviews showed that todays non- or random users are such because the
lack or poor quality of Internet access. That argument is not valid in the cities though but
is furthemore important in areas outside of the cities. Estonian government is in the
middle of projects called Külatee that should give Internet access to these areas, though
so far the developments are not satisfying for countryside people. They complain about
the lack of, poor quality or non-affordable price of the Internet service. Access barrier
proved to be the most important of the obstacles at all and neither of the other two main
obstacles (habit to learn in older age and language barrier) proved so important. But,
these barriers were mentioned in interviews.
Internet access is more important to countryside people than people in cities and data
analysis showed strongly that this point is valid. Mostly because of the straight benefit of
keeping the costs lower and save time.
This study revealed that it is important to focus the attention to non-users group as there
are very few surveys done in Estonia in that matter.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General)