The aim of the Dublin based project is to provide a comprehensive and rigorous exploration of the cultural and social dimensions of new media consumption. It is one of the first to explore how people actually think and feel about their use of new internet media in their homes, locality and beyond. Through living and working in a coastal community in Ireland, I have collected a wealth of intriguing and textured ethnographic material from families in their own homes, local institutions and local community and political groups, and this unique and unprecedented case study brings to the fore the manifold complexities associated with the powerful cultural significance and impact of new internet media in a specific region. The research makes some significant observations about the ways in which consumers of new internet media negotiate the private, domestic and public realms and the relationship between the local, national and European, revealing the complex and contradictory roles of the internet in domestic and local life. Moreover, interesting and important generalisations are made about the politics of social change in a specific locale, which both embrace and resist the impact of new internet media.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of the Dublin based project is to examine the relationship between domestic internet use in the household and participation in public life and this ethnographic research has been carried out in a localised setting: Coastal Town , North County Dublin. Thus, the objectives are:

• To examine how participants are using the internet in the domestic setting along existing broadcast or 'old' media
• To investigate whether domestic internet users are engaging with web based content as a means of generating new forms of content and/or connectivity within and beyond Coastal Town.

The research questions are also divided into two sections:

Old/new media -

• How have participants integrated the internet into the household or 'home' culture?
• How is the internet, as 'new media' used with existing or 'old media' and communication technology in the household?
• Has the internet replaced or transformed the use patterns, routines and rules of old/other media and communication technology?
• Thus, the project explores a number of dichotomous relationships between the public and private spheres; the local and global contexts and 'new' and 'old' media.

• To what extent does the domestic use of the internet allow the construction of new processes of public communication in Coastal Town?
• Is the internet employed by domestic users as a tool to create/engage with public forums on a national and international level?

Research Location and Methods

The paper is based on ethnographic data and interviews with domestic internet users. The research was carried out between January 2001 and January 2002 in a small coastal town in North County Dublin.

Location

The research was carried out in 'Coastal Town', which is located 20 miles north of Dublin City on the East coast of Ireland. Coastal Town was originally a fishing village, but has recently grown and now has a mixed population of older families and commuters; Coastal Town currently has a population of 11, 000. Recently, there has been a vast increase in building and construction work, creating new estates and apartments for both commuters and enabling some of the existing Coastal Town population to buy a second house for letting. Coastal Town also has a social housing scheme, run by the council, indicating the mix in social class that currently populates the town. Despite the mixed population, the majority of families in the town consist of a married couple and three children, where the male works full time and the female works part time (Census data, 1998).

Methods

An ethnographic approach has been adopted in conducting the research and this has involved:

• Participant observation in organisations and groups in Coastal Town, such as the anti-landfill campaign, the Fingal swimming pool committee and the local school.
• Twenty three semi-structured interviews were carried out with households between March 2001 and December 2001. The sample, was gained through a snowballing technique and the interviews were carried out in the home of the participant. The interview lasted between one and two hours and discussed:
  

  - The participants' adoption, use, incorporation and management of, and feelings towards, the internet and PC.
  
  - Participants patterns of media consumption,
  
  - The type of web based content they consumed,
  
  - How this related to their consumption old media
  
  - What they felt to be the advantages and disadvantages associated with the access to the internet in the home.

• A survey of 250 houses in Coastal Town, where participants were asked whether they had internet access at home, how often and for what purpose they used the internet (see appendix four, for a sample questionnaire).
• Content analysis of local newspapers and community related information
• Content analysis of Information Society Commission information as a means to assess the climate of Ireland's 'information society'.

Summary of Findings

The findings are arranged into a number of themes, but firstly I outline the ways in which participants tended to use the internet in the household

Adoption and 'Use Patterns' in Coastal Town

This summary of use patterns is derived from the survey, interview and participant observation material.

The survey of a local housing estate revealed:

• Use was split evenly between males and females, suggesting that use patterns were not gendered
• The Majority of users were between 31 and 40
• Use centred around email and work, rather than leisure

The in-depth interviews confirmed and complemented the results of the survey and revealed a high proportion of people had adopted the internet and adapted it to meet certain use patterns. The majority of use related to 'everyday use', where participants personalised the internet, constructing it as a technology to supplement the enactment of existing habits and routines, such as planning holidays. Other types of use centred on consumption health and educational material. Some participants used the internet to become further involved in political campaigns and forums, but few people used the internet to look at CT based material.

Characteristics of consumption

Most use patterns concerning the consumption of content have the following characteristics:

• Structured use
• Personally relevant
• Relates to existing media consumption.

Structured Use

The majority of the participants stated that they did not 'surf' the internet. Using a search engine was perceived as too time consuming, as the majority of websites retrieved were considered irrelevant and unreliable. The time consuming nature of surfing was also considered problematic as the activity engaged the phone line for long periods of time and this was perceived as expensive, inconvenient and a disadvantage of having an internet connection. Thus, participants tended to use sites they had an address for such as the BBC or the Irish Times or sites they already had on their favourites list such as 'pigsback.com' or Amazon.

Consumption and Production of Personally Relevant Content

Many participants used the internet to maintain personal contact with family and friends. This involved (re)-constructing their families, adding a web-based, or electronic, element to their family network. Other personally relevant tasks involved researching and organising travel and holidays and reading online newspapers and weather reports. School and college students also considered the internet to be a valuable resource for home-work and research purposes.

Content relating to 'older'/other media

The majority of participants were also keen to pursue websites that related to older or other media. For example email was used comment on, and give feedback to, programmes from the broadcast media; and used media simultaneously; participants both consumed web based content while listening to the radio; and it was indicated that while they continued to purchase a newspaper, they would also look at the corresponding website to read 'breaking news' or obtain a more detailed weather forecast.

Domesticating the Internet

The research has revealed that most participants gave considerable time to organising the household to accommodate the internet For the majority of participants domestic arrangements were considered crucial and conscientious efforts were made to 'domesticate' the technology.

When discussing domestic arrangements and the consumption and management of media participants were asked the following questions:

• How has the internet been integrated into the household or 'home' culture?
• How is the internet, as 'new media' used with existing or 'old media' and communication technology in the household?
• Has the internet replaced or transformed the use patterns, routines and rules of old/other media and communication technology?

With the body of work relating to the domestication concept (Silverstone et. al 1992, 1996, Silverstone, 1994; Sorenesen, 1996, 2000) and some further discussion of the work (Ling and Thrane, 2001), I suggest that users carefully balance the 'intrusion' of the technology with its domestication or 'organisation'. On the one hand,. ICTs provoke purposeful changes in the household's arrangements, relating to issues such as, spatial and temporal arrangements. Yet, on the other hand, attention is given to managing this disruption and 'organising' the household to accommodate the intrusion of the internet in terms of its function, location, spatial and temporal boundaries, and the relationship with other media in the household. Based on case studies on households with children and those working at home, it is suggested that users both 'accommodate' the intrusion of the technology, while actively 'organising' and domesticating the internet. Not only do the research findings reveal complex dynamics relating to the ways in which the internet is integrated into the household, but it is also suggested that the domestication concept provides a useful vehicle to analyse the way in which the internet impacts on domestic arrangements and the consumption of other media. These issues will be discussed at the EMTEL II conference in April 2003. See also a further discussion in the paper , 'The Bald Guy Just Ate an Orange: Working at Home and the Organisation of the Domestic Internet'

Locality Matters

In order to assess the relationship between domestic internet use and participation in public forums, participants were asked about the following: 

• CT based websites; whether they were accessed and for what reasons
• Local political campaigns; how information was gained and what was perceived as the most reliable and effective source
• Local community and hobby groups and how they felt about associated websites

Participants were also asked about:

• Other Irish based and global sites that had a political motivation
• Government web based information

For this section of the research I have drawn on literature relating to the media and the public sphere, where research carried out by Livingstone and Lunt (1994) where the ambiguous relationship between media based public forums and the potential for democratic communication is recognised and discussed in relation to the 'chat-show'. However, for the purposes of the research I have focused on work specifically relating to the internet and the emergence of the public sphere (see for example, Dahlberg, 1998, 2001). The findings provide support for those of O'Donnell (2001), who, in developing a framework to analyse 'alternative' media on the internet, draws on the Habermasian public sphere. In her study of 'Womenlink': an e-mailing list for women's organisations, O'Donnell makes two main points

O'Donnell's work is interesting as she tests out the possibility of online public spheres via an empirical investigation, but overall, she discovered that women's groups fail to make vast use of the internet in their campaigns, and instead rely on newsletters or postal mail-outs. Indeed, O'Donnell argues that the internet, although having the potential was not used by the women to interact with the global women's movement. Indeed, O'Donnell suggests that there is not only difficulties in making links between the local and the global in terms of the connection between women's groups, but also that Womenslink did not perform as the ideal public sphere.

Similarly, my research revealed the difficulties in making connections between local and global and the research suggests that face-to-face locality and place continue to matter to participants and were pertinent in defining identities. Admittedly, the internet with its global scope, by nature allows CT residents to make connections beyond the local, but it was also apparent that while the internet had been adopted as a means to engage with global content, face-to-face locality continued to play a dominant role in the construction of and participation in everyday life. Locality and maintaining a sense of place was important to the majority of the participants and it was evident that the materiality of CT had symbolic resonance to participants and the following key points are made:

1. Although CT has a wealth of websites concerning Tourism, local history, institutions, and campaigns, they play a limited role in facilitating public communication in CT.
2. CT residents rely largely on the print media and face-to-face meetings to imagine, construct and perpetuate the public spheres and forums at a local level in CT. 
3. Where the internet has been adopted by local groups, it was used as an 'advertising banner', rather than forum for interaction

PowerPoint presentation on the costal rown

Blurring Boundaries: Public and Private 

The research has also revealed other interesting tendencies relating to the consumption of health based content and the production of family based content for personal websites and the way in which this type of internet use blurs the boundaries between public and private, and the way that these categories are perceived. This area requires further research and an some indicative ideas have been presented in the following short introductory paper: 'Transforming the Family: Towards a Shell Institution?'

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