Digital Divide

This first collaborative event between the two long-running communication research conference bodies, held November 16 – 17 at the University of Texas, Austin, went extremely well, despite concerns that air traffic issues might sabotage the event. Even a tornado touching down near the Austin airport the evening most participants were arriving, and consequent flooding of roads to the airport, failed to disrupt the meeting.

Discussions at the simultaneous panels and in the intervals between them were energetic. The nearly one hundred who took part were from India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Canada, as well as the USA. They included graduate students as well as a majority of more seasoned researchers.

Reactions were uniformly favourable from members of both organizations, as well as from participants who belonged to neither. The fairly focused nature of the conference topic undoubtedly encouraged vigorous discussion and fresh networking. Both organizations have their own identities and will undoubtedly maintain them, but this symposium showed the positive results that could be achieved by pooling forces for a specific goal. There was already talk at the conference of a second joint Digital Divide symposium to be held in two years’ time at Loughborough University, UK.

The event would have been impossible without significant funding from Dean Ellen Wartella of the College of Communication at the University of Texas, and additional help from the Ford Foundation.

John D.H. Downing
jdowning@mail.utexas.edu